“If you eat the bread, you’ll die, he said, and it sounded more like a caress than a threat.”
Based on a real-life mass poisoning in a rural French village, this is a hypnotic and often absurd fever dream of a novel that I read quickly, as though in a trance.
In the aftermath of World War II, Elodie, the baker’s wife, lives a staid and frustrated existence. When a new ambassador arrives in town, his glamorous wife Violet quickly captures Elodie’s attention and soon, an obsession is formed. What starts as seemingly innocent fascinations soon turns into more sinister events. A boy jumps into a fire, horses are found dead in a field and the townspeople start acting in strange ways, all culminating in the final, frenzied day.
Told through flashbacks, as Elodie writes letters to Violet, the novel plays with subtle manipulations of power, through the characters’ desires and delusions and is constantly shifting the reader’s perception of what is real and who can be trusted. Sophie Mackintosh’s writing is silky smooth and incredibly effective at lulling you into a dream state, from which she then yanks you unceremoniously, leaving you dazed and confused, as though untimely woken from a nap. It felt like such a different reading experience and I absolutely loved being transported in this way. A perfect winter book, best enjoyed by candlelight, safely cosseted in blankets.