‘A simmering debut, heady with the possibilities of language and 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
‘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 Bookseller
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Iris is adrift: thirty-two, newly single, living at home with her mother and working a dead end job. Her life changes when she meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives at a women’s commune on a remote farm hidden in the Kent Downs. At the farm, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, under the leadership of the gargantuan Blythe.
Drawn to Hazel and the possibility of a new start away from a world of men who have only let her down, Iris throws herself into this alternative way of life, seizing on new experiences and hidden desires. But even among the women, she witnesses power struggles, cruelty and transgressions that threaten their precarious existence. When a group of men arrive on the farm, the commune’s existence is thrown into question, culminating in an act of devastating violence.
