Woodworm
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- CHF 13.00
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- CHF 13.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
‘Tense, chilling’ Mariana Enriquez, author of Our Share of Night
'Lays bare intergenerational horror, feminine rage and the taking back of power' Stylist
The house breathes.
The house contains bodies and secrets.
The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes.
It was built by a small-time hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can’t leave.
They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.
Layla Martínez’s eerie debut novel Woodworm is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun.
Translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martinez debuts with a sophisticated ghost story about a former nanny suspected of involvement in a child's disappearance. The unnamed young woman has just been detained because of her suspected connection to the mysterious disappearance of her wealthy employer's son, Guillermo Jarabo. After her release for lack of evidence, she moves back in with her grandmother, her only surviving relative, in the house she grew up in somewhere near Madrid. Ostracized by the villagers and scrutinized by journalists, the women spend their days confined to their dilapidated house, which has long been haunted by ghosts who exasperate them with constant muttering. The spirits are woven into their family's legacy: the house was purchased by the grandmother's physically abusive father, whose wife later killed him at the ghosts' urging, an act that instilled in her the family's "woodworm itch" to do rotten things (for her part, the grandmother believes her granddaughter intentionally let Guillermo wander off). As the narrative alternates between the perspectives of the granddaughter and grandmother, Martinez reveals how Guillermo's disappearance connects to the women's long struggle against poverty and their family's contentious relationship with the Jarabos. Martinez breathes new life into the classic haunted house motif through her vivid exploration of generational trauma, violence, misogyny, and class. Readers won't soon forget this striking tale.
