The Spoil
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Mar 17, 2026
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- $12.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
In a rambling split-level house on the outskirts of Tacoma in the 1970s, a young girl is preoccupied by the anomalous phenomena she reads about in magazines: alien visitations, ESP, pyramid power, the Bermuda Triangle. Meanwhile, she and her stepbrother, thrown uneasily together by disaster and divorce, grow increasingly convinced that a malevolent presence resides in their house, and they develop elaborate strategies to live with it.
Years later, Mandy is living in Las Vegas in a modern townhouse caring for her mother who is in a terminal decline from Alzheimer’s. She works for a real estate company but struggles to focus on her tasks. She takes medication to manage her ADHD, which has her zagging between distraction and obsession, always halfway through some home renovation project. Then, while digging through a box of her mother’s things hoarded in her garage, she sets something loose. Something old and baleful: a demon that soon possesses one of her neighbors, an affable semiretired house flipper and handyman named TK. What follows is a gripping and often terrifying story of familial grief in which the past is both elusive and paralyzing, and questions of science and spirit become urgent.
The Spoil, Maile Chapman’s first novel in fifteen years, is tuned in to the most unusual frequencies, bringing us messages from beyond about the deepest mysteries of grief and longing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Chapman (Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto) unfurls an uneven tale of psychological horror about a woman's lifelong experiences of the uncanny and struggles with ADHD. Mandy grows up in Tacoma, Wash., with her mother, Jandine; her stepfather, Terry; and her stepbrother, Jeff. As children, she and Jeff are terrified of the basement, convinced there is some evil presence there. Finding refuge at the public library, she reads obsessively about ghosts, aliens, and other unearthly subjects. Mandy leaves for college in Las Vegas and settles there after graduation. Years later, after Terry dies, Jandine joins her there, and Mandy cares for her as she declines from Alzheimer's. When Jandine dies, Mandy's childhood fears return, triggered this time by her belief that her kindly neighbor, known as TK, is possessed by a dangerous force. With the help of Jeff's new girlfriend, Belén, along with Sam, the husband of Belén's godmother, who is also experiencing cognitive decline, Mandy looks for a way to save TK. Mandy's hectic narration is cluttered with free-associative tangents into esoteric subjects like ancient Egyptian history. More illuminating is an attempt to decipher an "ADHD parable" in Ray Bradbury's "The Scythe" ("Today in hyperfocus my path through the grain is clear and easy to follow"). There's plenty to admire, but not all of it hangs together.
