With Cursed Bread, fairfairisles shows that she is not just adept at imagining disturbingly close futures, but a playful interpreter of historic events too 🖊️ By ellen_cph
Sophie Mackintosh is a connoisseur of feminist dystopia. In her Man Booker Prize-longlisted debut novel, she told the story of three girls who, brought up on a remote island, are taught to stay away from the “toxin-filled world” of men. In, she mapped a society in which a lottery system decides whether a woman will have children or whether she will be force-fitted with an intrauterine device to ensure she cannot conceive.
The arrival of a new couple brings excitement to the postwar town. Violet and the ambassador – we never learn his name, nor do we know Elodie’s husband’s – are a sophisticated duo. She wears silk blouses and lace-trimmed knickers that the ladies of the town can only dream of. The couple throws a party. When Elodie and her husband and Violet and the ambassador share stories of how they met their other halves, there is a silken sense of erotic competition. Then Elodie creeps upstairs to eavesdrop on her hosts. She hears the ambassador accuse Violet of wanting to sleep with Elodie’s husband. Elodie is “disappointed” when Violet denies it. Then he says something even more enticing: “If you eat the bread, you’ll die.
It’s the start of a teasing, multi-way affair between the four characters. Between chapters recounting their various meetings, Mackintosh includes letters Elodie sends to Violet from some point in the future. She is now living alone, and the police often come by to ask if she remembers anything more about what happened. But Mackintosh keeps the details dangling in front of us, just out of reach, until the novel’s very end.
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