Cursed Bread

In 1951, le pain maudit – or ‘the cursed bread’ – was at the centre of a mass poisoning event that tore through the small village of Pont-Saint-Esprit, leaving seven villagers dead and 50 interned in asylums. The cause of the real tragedy is shrouded in mystery, ripe for creative interpretation. In her latest novel, Booker Prize longlisted author Sophie Mackintosh imagines the feverish weeks that may have preceded the event.

Elodie, the baker’s wife, develops an infatuation with the wife of a new ambassador in the small town. Violet is glamourous and foreign to Elodie, and her returned interest heightens the obsession. She becomes enamoured with her idea of Violet’s life, infinitely more fulfilled than her own. The novel is punctuated by a series of foreboding letters from Elodie to Violet; as abnormal events lead the town towards hysteria, Elodie is too otherwise occupied to recognise her role.

There is a dreamlike quality to this novel, as we dart back and forth between versions of Elodie that feel more and less in touch with reality. Mackintosh’s prose is hypnotic, we are allowed to know very little about Violet, yet both the fascination and the events it leads her to feel understandable, necessary even. Elodie is unsettling to know, poisoned by envy and harnessing more power than she knows; ‘The possibility of transformation, that destruction which can feel a lot like peace when it comes, was in me all along.’

Cursed Bread is not a book about murder, and it is also not a book about love. It is about desire, and the relationship between desire and shame. If you want to read a book about what happens when we debase ourselves to explore the potential of our desires, here you will find a spellbinding exploration.