SPOILED MILK

A young woman tries to survive supernatural happenings at her boarding school.

Something wicked this way comes in Curran’s Sapphic gothic debut. Set at Briarley School for Girls in 1928, the novel follows strong-minded Emily Locke as she navigates a school year she will never forget. Near the start of term, Violet Kirsch, the “golden girl” of their class, dies unexpectedly on her 18th birthday. Emily and her nemesis, Evelyn Hart, whose lives revolved around Violet, are shattered by her death. Violet’s death seems to set off—or perhaps unearths—something evil onto the school. Spoiled food, sludgy water, unexplained illness, and strange behavior begin to plague the ladies of Briarley. As the bodies pile up, the girls turn reluctantly to spiritualism as a way to solve the deadly mystery. While other students leave, Emily and her remaining classmates close in to protect each other and their home: “I’d grown accustomed to the six of us existing as a unit, and I couldn’t bear the thought of it being broken apart.” With Evelyn as their chosen but discontented medium, the girls reach into the beyond—and are devastated by what they find. As Emily and Evelyn step toward the unsaid truth at the center of their relationship with Violet, they begin to see their late friend—and each other—more clearly than ever. Queerness weaves through the novel like an inversion of the rot spreading through the school. Though the book is steeped in the realities of the time period, Curran wonderfully shows how the girl’s burgeoning sexuality and relationships provide them with a complicated refuge from the dangers within and beyond Briarley. The use of foreshadowing effectively builds tension and dread—but the novel also hits similar beats over and over, which affects the pacing. Regardless, the novel’s true strength is exploring the complex relationships among the girls—both living and dead—and the unknowns of the world.

A queer, eerie debut.