Spoilt Creatures: An Observer Best Debut of 2024 - 'compelling, cultish and utterly feral' Alice Slater

They thought they knew everything about us. The kind of women we were.

It was a place for women. A remote farm tucked away in the Kent Downs. A safe space.

When Iris - newly single and living at home with her mother - meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives in a women's commune, she finds herself drawn into the possibility of a new start away from the world of men who have only let her down. Here, at Breach House, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, all while under the leadership of their gargantuan matriarch, Blythe.

But even among the women, there are power struggles, cruelty and transgressions that threaten their precarious way of life. When a group of men arrives on the farm, the commune's existence is thrown into question, hurtling Iris and the other women towards an act of devastating violence.

Fierce and unapologetic, Spoilt Creatures is an intoxicating debut about transgression, sisterhood and the seductive nature of obsession. It pulls back the skin of patriarchal violence and examines the female rage that lurks beneath.