Overview

AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT OF 2025 'Astonishing' LUCY ROSE 'Biting and rich' MOLLY AITKEN 'Unforgettable' OBSERVER 'A novel of rare power' GABRIELLE GRIFFITHS An itchy feeling. A wrinkle in the forest. A cracking twig. A coming sound. Myma, do you hear it? Myma, do you hear? Myma? Maya and Daughter live in complete isolation in a secluded woodland, their days aligned with the light and changing seasons, a complex pattern of routine and ritual. Daughter has never questioned the life her mother has chosen for them; the life that has meant she's never met another soul, or known anywhere except their forest home. But one day, when Daughter is almost sixteen, a red-haired stranger steps into the confines of their territory. Where there was always two, suddenly there are three - and the carefully constructed world that Maya has built to keep her daughter safe may not survive it. Urgent, haunting and thrillingly alive, Life Cycle of a Moth explores both the tenderness and ferocity of maternal love, asking what we might find ourselves capable of - and willing to sacrifice - in order to shelter those we hold dear.

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9781837262458

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Muscular, moving and muddy, Life Cycle of a Moth is an unflinching woodland fable you cannot miss. It's astonishing and stirring; a debut novel tenderly cadenced and alchemical, and I'm still reeling from turning its final pages. Rowe Irvin is a born storyteller -- LUCY ROSE, author of THE LAMB As gentle and tender as it is dark and unsettling, Life Cycle of a Moth depicts a complex mother daughter relationship in a strange yet familiar setting. The prose is biting and rich, echoing the rankness and brittle beauty of the natural world. The mysteries at the novel's heart kept me riveted -- MOLLY AITKEN Life Cycle of a Moth is a novel of rare power - a moving meditation on care and harm, a love letter to the natural world, and a playful inquiry into language and form. Irvin is a writer of astonishing talent who has achieved something truly special with this strange, beautiful and entirely singular novel -- GABRIELLE GRIFFITHS Epic and intimate, brimming with fierce love and jagged wonder, Life Cycle of a Moth is the kind of book whose pages you can't stop turning even as you don't want them to end. There are echoes here of visionary wordsmiths like Eimear McBride, Ursula K. Le Guin and Marlen Haushofer, but the accomplishment - as singular as it is striking - is all Irvin's own -- LAIRD HUNT, National Book Award finalist for ZORRIE

Author Information

Rowe Irvin is a writer and artist living between London and Manchester. Her work has appeared in Prototype 5, Unquiet Slumbers: A Collection of Folk Horror Tales (Nepenthé Press) and The Stinging Fly. She was awarded second prize in the 2024 Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award. She is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing, with a focus on oral tradition and folk tales, at the University of Manchester. Life Cycle of a Moth is her first novel. @bog__daughter

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