Spoilt Creatures

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

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A dark, riveting literary debut about cults, transgression and female rage, for fans of YELLOWJACKETS, Emma Cline's THE GIRLS and Lara Williams' SUPPER CLUB

32-year-old Iris is adrift: newly single, living at home with her mother and working a dead-end job. Her life changes when she meets the mysterious and beguiling Hazel, who lives at a women's commune on a remote farm hidden in the Kent Downs. At the farm, the women can be loud and dirty, live and eat abundantly, under the leadership of the gargantuan Blythe.

Drawn to Hazel and the possibility of a new start away from a world of men who have only let her down, Iris throws herself into this alternative way of life, seizing on new experiences and hidden desires. But even among the women, she witnesses power struggles, cruelty and transgressions that threaten their precarious existence. When a group of men arrive on the farm, the commune's existence is thrown into question, culminating in an act of devastating violence.

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'A simmering debut, heady with the possibilities of language and the righteousness of female rage'
Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies

(P)2024 Headline Publishing Group Ltd©2024 Amy Twigg

Amy TwiggSarah LambieTinder Press

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Literature & Fiction

Women's Fiction

Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Women's Fiction

Critic reviews

A simmering debut, heady with the possibilities of language and the righteousness of female rage (Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of 'The Mercies')

Lush and dreamlike - a sweltering novel, where the sunlight pulses with nightmarish dread (Colin Walsh, author of 'Kala')

A modern-day Dionysian cult of women in the woods - haunting, exhilarating and full of female rage (Jennifer Saint, author of 'Ariadne')

This lusciously verdant novel is about female identity and obsession, desire and autonomy. It asks important questions about what we owe, and to who. It is rich in grit and dirt, in sensuality and oblivion, working towards a complicated and devastating end (Lara Williams, author of Supper Club)

Emma Cline's The Girls meets Lord of the Flies, Spoilt Creatures is compelling, cultish and utterly feral. I'm drinking the Amy Twigg Kool-Aid, and it tastes like blood and rotten summer berries. A firecracker of a debut!" (Alice Slater, author of 'Death of a Bookseller')

A sun-drenched, blood-soaked fever dream of a novel. Amy Twigg's prose is as exact as her setting and characters are wild, and she unflinchingly portrays female rage in its full, terrible glory (Erin Kelly, author of The Skeleton Key)

I haven't stopped thinking about Spoilt Creatures and the women who live at Breach House. It's a deeply stirring, startling and savage novel for the weird girlies. Amy Twigg beguiles, penning an unflinching cult novel that is both a rare pleasure and a breathless, suffocating pressure cooker (Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb)

A powerful, angry, dark and compelling feminist debut novel. It pulls you in to the visceral world of the women in the commune and it shocks and moves you. Beautifully written (Georgina Moore, author of 'The Garnett Girls')

An intimate and intense tale of how a safe haven can become a dangerous place, told with much insight and humanity (Ewan Morrison, author of 'Nina X')

Earthy and visceral, Spoilt Creatures is a depiction of female physicality unlike any I've read before (Ben Tufnell, author of 'The North Shore')

This is a book that sinks its claws in and doesn't let go. Filled with atmosphere and incredible prose, it's compulsive reading right up until its terrible, inevitable end (Jennie Godfrey, author of 'The List of Suspicious Things')

A gripping, beautifully imagined reflection on women and anger - I couldn't put it down (Emily Howes, author of 'The Painter's Daughters')

Spoilt Creatures is a poignant exploration of loss, female anger, and just how far we can each be pushed. The book is sensual and sinister and achingly sad. A chilling cautionary tale, it's perfect for fans of The Girls by Emma Cline (Flora Carr, author of The Tower)

Most relevant

The narrator made the book a much better experience so me, as the book is, unfortunately, not for me.

I found the prose interesting and sensual, but the story itself tepid. I did not find the story feral, as others described it. But the book really wanted me to feel everyone in it was so wild and primal. Alas, the only impression it did leave is that the author has never spent that much time outdoors, especially in Kent. I could not suspend my disbelief about the wilderness of rural Kent, nor of village locals for some reason gawking wide-eyed at a group of shabbily dressed women. Sorry, but it's been months since I saw a well-dressed Englishwoman and have a hard time imagining any English person being aghast at the sign of charity shop skirts.