Sophie Mackintosh

Atmospheric, evocative, and non-straightforward novel inspired by the "mass poisoning" that occurred in small French town of Pont-Saint-Esprit during the summer of 1951. No cause was ever discovered. In this telling it has something to do with the mysterious couple, an "ambassador" and his wife Violet, who arrive in town and fascinate everyone, most of all Elodie, wife of the local baker. Did this couple, bored with their sado-masochistic sexual games, manipulate and engineer the whole incident for their own amusement? Did the non-poisoned villagers exact revenge on them? Did Elodie commit murder? Who the hell knows? If this book had been longer I probably would not have finished it, but I kept at it hoping for clarity that never came. The writing is is very beautiful at times, but I did not care for the constant references to blood and decapitation, nor the strange shifts in point of view.… (mais)

I tried hard to understand this book. It was totally confusing. The excerpts before the chapters were no better. Those couldn't even be called foreshadowing, for the most part. The book thrives on describing every exploitation known to man. It kind of, sort of, ties up loose ends at the very last chapter, but not really. The issue with the drugs in the cabinet, for instance. Did I miss something? I probably should have written down the names of the drugs and looked them up, but this book did not motivate me to do the things a good reader ordinarily does. I read and re-read pages, trying to "get" what I should. I personally didn't like the book, but if I had rated it on that, it would have been one star versus three. I would rather be waterboarded versus read The Water Cure again. And how was the water cure a cure? I have more questions than answers by the end of the book. And I kept waiting for the word Munchausen Syndrome to come out in this book. Funny thing is, I like a little bit of light-hearted male bashing jokes, but this obsession with men being all evil and contagious really was old and nauseating to me after several chapters. If you like rituals, OCDish behaviors, deviant stuff, over and over and over again, you will LOVE this book! It was hard to get attached to any character because their redeeming qualities were far outweighed by their dysfunctional state! I will say that their fascination with Science was amusing at times until it went so far off the realm of reality that it was disgusting how they rationalized everything they did from the mundane to the serious. I wanted the main characters and myself to jump that barbed wire fence very early on. Another thing that bothered me was timing. Timing to tell others important information. Timing to carry out duties that were supposed to be carried out. Waiting and killing time during the course of the story with these characters didn't make any sense AT ALL to me! Now I need a water cure to scrub my brain of the memory of reading this. Sorry!… (mais)

Happy Publication Day(U.S.)!
April 4, 2023


“Pain becomes an animal, walking at your side. Pain becomes a home you can carry with you.”

A fictional take on the 1951 mass poisoning of the small French village of Pont Saint Esprit, Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh is an atmospheric, complex and hypotonic novel that reeled me in and kept me hooked till the very last page. The end will leave you a tad unsettled, but I guess that is the author’s intention. Stunning prose, flawed characters, and uneven structure create a claustrophobic yet gripping reading experience.

The story revolves around Elodie, presently widowed wife of a village baker who recounts the events leading up to a mass tragedy that occurred in her village. Elodie, the baker’s wife leads a monotonous life, selling bread, gossiping with the other village women while washing clothes and being ignored by her husband whose passion for baking was markedly more pronounced than his romantic interest in his wife. The arrival of a new couple, the affluent Ambassador and his wife Violet, create ripples in the village. Elodie is taken with Violet, and though initially, Violet ignores Elodie’s attempts at engaging her in conversation, Violet and the Ambassador befriend Elodie and her husband. The story is presented to us in flashbacks from the perspective of Elodie with an epistolary element in the form of letters she addresses to Violet interspersed throughout the narrative. The novel primarily revolves around the complicated dynamic between Elodie and Violet, or more precisely Elodie’s obsession with Violet – she oscillates between awe and envy and as the narrative progresses her sense of reality blurs. Much of this stems from her monotonous life and lack of physical intimacy with her husband. Violet’s motivations are initially unclear - she claims to be lonely, and shares intimate details of her relationship with the Ambassador alternating between treating Elodie like a confidante and at times being deliberately elusive creating an aura of mystery that confuses Elodie and further fuels her obsession, leaving her susceptible to both Violet’s and the Ambassador’s manipulations.

“I picture you sometimes as a set of Russian dolls, each layer revealing nothing except a tiny, weaker version of yourself, at the end only hollowness. You made yourself a character in your own story, at least as much as I made you a character in mine. Now it’s impossible to know what I was told and what I created.”

This is my first Sophie Mackintosh novel and I look forward to reading more of her work in the future. Many thanks to author Sophie Mackintosh, Doubleday Books and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel.

“I think about how desire grows in the spaces around the known, where things are at their most and least real, where the terror of all the possibilities fracturing out through our lives is suspended, momentarily, so we can look them in the eye for once, and isn’t that what we are searching for when we debase ourselves for love, one moment of certainty in this strange and beautiful world.”… (mais)