First published 2012
In the marshy landscapes of eastern England, something primal stirs beneath ordinary surfaces. These stories track women and girls who exist at the razor's edge between human and animal, between mundane reality and mythic transformation. A teenager starves herself into an eel-like form. A house develops obsessive love for its inhabitant. Women birth impossible creatures. Each narrative reveals how thin the membrane is between domesticity and wilderness, between what society expects and what raw nature demands. These are not magical realist fantasies, but visceral explorations of female embodiment and desire. Bodies shift. Boundaries dissolve. Hunger—sexual, physical, existential—becomes a force more powerful than social constraint. The landscape itself becomes a character: wet, breathing, alive with ancient impulses that civilization can never fully suppress.
Genres: literary-fiction, fantasy, contemporary, magical-realism
Vibes: atmospheric, intimate, lyrical, thought-provoking
Tropes: body-horror, mythic-transformation, visceral-exploration
Setting: Eastern England, England
Period: 21st-century
208 pages · Hardcover · Jonathan Cape
Content warnings: body-horror, graphic-violence