Spoilt Creatures : An Observer Best Debut of 2024 – ‘compelling, cultish and utterly feral’ Alice Slater

Published 27/03/2025 | Paperback / softback,
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An Observer top ten best new novelist for 2024An LRB Book of the Week’The most talked about debut of 2024′ Stylist’A simmering debut, heady with the righteousness of female rage’Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies’Lush and dreamlike – a sweltering novel, where the sunlight pulses with nightmarish dread’Colin Walsh, author of Kala’This lusciously verdant novel is rich in grit and dirt, in sensuality and oblivion’Lara Williams, author of Supper Club’A modern-day Dionysian cult of women in the woods – haunting and exhilarating’Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne’Emma Cline’s The Girls meets Lord of the Flies . . . compelling, cultish and utterly feral’Alice Slater, author of Death of a BooksellerTHEY THOUGHT THEY KNEW EVERYTHING ABOUT US. THE KIND OF WOMEN WE WERE. Iris seeks a different kind of life. Promise comes in the form of Hazel, who lives at Breach House – a women’s commune on a remote farm. At Breach House, the women live and eat in abundance, are guided by landscape and ritual, all while under the leadership of their gargantuan matriarch, Blythe.

But is Breach House truly the haven it seems? When an unforgivable transgression comes to light and power struggles intensify, the women find themselves hurtling towards an act of devastating violence that will threaten everything they’ve fought to create.