3.5 

Woodworm

By Layla Martinez & Sophie Hughes &
Woodworm by Layla Martinez & Sophie Hughes &  digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

That was the night I finally understood everything. It all rushed into my head as I was lying in bed. The old woman had always thought the Jarabos’ hatred was one of those long-standing feuds between families that fester and fester and never form a scab, but it wasn’t. The Jarabos weren’t any worse than others like them and they didn’t hate us any more than they hated others like us. They’d taken against the old woman because of the bundles, because now the whole village thought they could wish ill on their family and get away with it, that they could slip through the woods in the middle of the night and come to this house in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of a wasteland, to cook up some bad luck for the boss the lord the master without ever paying the price. But they detest us all equally, find us all equally disgusting and that disgust gets inside us and fills us with a poison that we carry so deep down we start thinking it’s ours, but it’s not. And then I fell asleep and when I woke up the rage was gnawing away at me like woodworm and I don’t know if the shadows put it there between whispers in the night or if it came into my head of its own accord but that doesn’t matter because either way I knew I had to get it out. I couldn’t quit my job just yet. There was something I had to do first.

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Woodworm Reviews

3.5
“just an old lady who loves her cats ✨🫰🏽”
“the translators were scared of commas ig”
“Interesting horror tale about a haunted house and generational curse. It was an entertaining story with odd characters that I tend to enjoy!”

About Layla Martinez

Layla Martínez (Madrid, 1987) is the author of  two nonfiction books in Spanish, Surrogate Pregnancy (Pepitas de calabaza, 2019) and Utopia is not an Island (Episkaia, 2020), as well as stories and articles in numerous anthologies. She has translated essays and novels, writes about music for El Salto, and about television for La Última Hora. Since 2014 she has co-directed the independent publisher Antipersona. Woodworm is her first novel.

Annie McDermott

Annie McDermott is a translator working from Spanish and Portuguese. Her published and forthcoming translations include Empty Words and The Luminous Novel by Mario Levrero, Dead Girls and Brickmakers by Selva Almada, Feebleminded by Ariana Harwicz (co-translation with Carolina Orloff), and Loop by Brenda Lozano. She also reviews books for the Times Literary Supplement. She has previously lived in Mexico City and São Paulo, Brazil, and now lives by the sea in Hastings, UK.

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