Description

The house remembers what the living forget.

The house breathes -it keeps its dead close and nobody ever leaves. A grandmother and a granddaughter live together under its roof, surrounded by the ghosts of its past. When a local boy disappears, the two women combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in the pursuit of something that resembles justice.

Woodworm is a furious, class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun, every page drenched with dread and strange beauty.

‘Tense, chilling’ Mariana Enriquez

‘Lays bare intergenerational horror and feminine rage’ Stylist

Publisher Review

This supernatural story of an outcast girl and her grandmother lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power. * Stylist * A house of women and shadows, built from poetry and revenge. Layla Martinez’s tense, chilling novel tells a story of specters, class war, violence and loneliness, as naturally as if the witches had dictated this lucid, terrible nightmare to Martinez themselves. — Mariana Enriquez, author of OUR SHARE OF THE NIGHT It pounces on us from the first line and doesn’t let go until the last, if it lets go. The Gothic revival continues to expand and produce great works. — Edmundo Paz Soldan, author of NORTE Woodworm is a true literary event. — Belen Gopegui, author of Stay This Day and Night with Me This book is the revenge of an intergenerational wound, the embrace of barbarity, the loss of morals when trying to protect your loved ones. This book is the miserable and the wretched saying ‘enough is enough.’ — Alana S. Portero, author of BAD HABIT