Proseography

The following review contains spoilers. They are hidden under tags, so beware!

Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh

Publisher: Penguin

Published: March, 2023

Pages: 170

Genres: Literary fiction, historical fiction, mystery, lgbtqa+

Spring, 1951. Four people meet in a small French town: the baker and his wife; the ambassador and his wife. Two belong to the town, two are outsiders.
Some time later, strange things start happening. Horses drop dead in the fields. Children grow wild and unbiddable. Ghosts are sighted after dark. Someone is playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse – but who is the predator and who their prey?
Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a darkly erotic mystery about a town gripped by madness, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

This story is based on real events that took place in the town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951, when there was a mass poisoning that killed seven people and affected more than 250. There are many theories as to what poisoned these people and though none of them have ever been proven, many believe it to have been the bread.

Despite the title and the story behind it, this book was delicious. I got drunk on the languid prose and knew from the first couple of paragraphs it would keep me reading even if I didn’t like the story as much.

We follow the story through Elodie’s point of view⎯a woman unhappy in her marriage, untouched by her husband, and eager for… something. Anything. Well, she finds a new obsession when the ambassador (unnamed) and his wife, Violet, come into town.

To be fair, everyone in town was obsessed with them, though no one took it as far as Elodie. I loved the scenes with the other wives where they tried on Violet’s clothes and gossiped about her. It felt like a shameful but very willing transgression, something I might have wanted to do myself but would never have the guts to. This whole book felt like that. Every step Elodie took towards Violet had me both fretting the advance and wanting her to go further.

The uncertainty of Elodie’s and Violet’s relationship was very interesting to me⎯did Elodie want her or did she just want to be her? I did not mind the ambiguity, I actually preferred it to a clear-cut ending, but I was certainly curious about a few unanswered questions.

I also wish we had gotten to know a bit more about the husband. I know the men remained unnamed, leaving the women to lead the narrative (bravo), but I couldn’t help but wonder about his utter refusal to touch her. Was it merely a portrayal of how intimacy in a marriage changes over time? Perhaps. But as his refusals became more intense, it made me think there was more to it than we were getting access to. Or maybe it was just how intensely Elodie perceived the rejections while high on poisonous bread.

I am eager to reread this book once I’ve forgotten some of what happened so I can read it with fresh eyes again. I suppose I could have missed a thing or two, too distracted by Elodie’s horniness. All in all, I recommend this short, erotic book for those who don’t mind unanswered questions. If anything, I recommend it for its beautiful, alluring prose.

For this review, I chose one of the few pictures I took at the town of Étretat last year. The small town of Cursed Bread took me back to the day trip I took to spend a day at the coast of Normandy. It was a lovely place, so small and charming, the water so blue. I wish I could have stayed longer to walk around and get to know Étretat a little better.