An Observer top ten best new novelist for 2024

‘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

‘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 Bookseller

______

They thought they knew everything about us. The kind of women we were.

Iris is adrift when she meets the beguiling Hazel, who lives on a women’s commune. As she is drawn into commune life, Iris is soon seduced by the possibility of a new start away from a world of men who have only let her down. At Breach House the women are free to live and eat abundantly, to be loud and dirty, all whilst under the leadership of their gargantuan matriarch, Blythe.

But is Breach House truly the haven it seems? And just how much can Iris trust her new family? When an unforgivable transgression threatens the commune’s existence, Iris and the other women find themselves hurtling towards an act of devastating violence.

Fierce and unapologetic, Spoilt Creatures is an intoxicating debut that pulls back the skin of the patriarchy and examines the female rage that lies beneath.