Review by Booklist Review
Margot's Mama is not like other mamas. Mama is violent and bitter and spends her time waiting for the next unfortunate human to stumble upon their cottage in the wilderness. Mama calls these humans strays, and after Margot and Mama have buried their clothes and belongings in the backyard, the strays become dinner. Margot is used to being Mama's entire world, but when bright-eyed Eden crosses their threshold, cracks begin to form in Margot's perception of the world. She begins to see her friend Abbie, the daughter of one of their latest strays, through a different lens, and Mama's love turns from affectionate to suffocating. Rose's debut is a brutal meditation on motherhood, feminine rage, and what it takes to survive. It's equal parts scathing and sentimental, and fans of Rachel Yoder's Nightbitch (2021) and Kristi DeMeester's Such a Pretty Smile (2022) will be perversely delighted by Margot's bloody coming-of-age.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Rose debuts with a potent and grotesque tale about a girl raised to be a cannibal. Margot learns from her mother to feed on "strays," people who stumble upon their cottage in an English forest seeking shelter. When Margot reaches puberty, her mother reacts with disgust, plucking the hair growing from her armpits and beating her. "Men are forever thought of as boys," she tells Margot. "But girls? Once we're mamas or once we're ripe, we can never be girls again." When a beautiful woman named Eden knocks on their door, Margot's mother invites her in and falls deeply in love. With Eden living with them, Margot's mother's hunger increases, causing Eden to worry their murderous lifestyle will be exposed. Meanwhile, Margot's kindly school bus driver notices a bruise on her cheek and asks if she's safe at home. She lies about what happened, trying not to break her mother's cardinal rule against drawing attention. The rule figures into the novel's dramatic final act, when Margot worries she'll be punished, perhaps even eaten, if she doesn't escape. Rose's portrayal of the cannibalism feels at once vividly real and metaphorical, satisfying both as horror and as a portrait of the dark side of feminine rage. This modern folktale hits hard. Agent: Rebecca Gradinger, UTA. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Grimms' Fairy Tales meetsMommie Dearest in a twisted debut novel about the complex hungers of mothers and daughters. Margot, also known as "Little One," lives with her mama in a homestead in the forest. "The people out there, Little One, they will never understand us," her mother tells her. "We aren't like them. We're woven from different cloth." Margot's mama takes in "strays," lost souls who don't have homes, inviting them in, warming them, plying them with tea and blankets--before roasting them with potatoes or crisping them in butter and rosemary from the garden. Tied to her mother by both fear and a fierce love, Margot learns from the older woman's hunger until it becomes her own. "Her story had to be mine," Margot muses about a beautiful stray she encounters on her walk home from school. "I wanted to plant those eyes of hers like the pit of a fruit tree in my stomach." But Margot slowly realizes that things that seem to satiate her mother's hunger never quite satisfy her, and her own ache for contact with the outside world leads her to develop bonds with a kindly school bus driver and a classmate named Abbie. The question remains, though, whether these relationships will be able to fill the ache she feels. After all, Margot tells readers she was raised not on breast or bottle, but on blood. One day, Eden, a beautiful stranger, appears in the midst of a snowstorm, changing Margot's and her mother's lives forever. The rich, almost unguent prose carries the story through its gruesome developments without, surprisingly, being gratuitous, as it digs deep into the viscera of the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters, lovers, and one's own physical and emotional hungers. A gruesome yet illuminating coming-of-age story that will keep readers awake night after night. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
