At the Edge of the Woods

With assurance and remarkable dexterity, Kathryn Bromwich’s masterful debut novel is a rich, gorgeously descriptive account of a woman hiding from old ghosts and new in the Italian Alps, while rekindling her own sense of self through nature.

Laura lives alone in a cabin deep within the forest, making her living translating medical documents and tutoring the children of affluent locals. She spends her days climbing the mountains outside her door and roaming the woods, and soon begins a relationship with a waiter some years her junior, which brings new rhythms to her life. But late one night there is a knock on the door, and on the other side stands someone from her past who has finally found her.

As the mystery surrounding why she is there comes into focus, Laura is plagued by a fever, and starts to experience flashbacks to her youth, along with an eerie second sight that seems to lift the veil on reality while making astonishing new connections with the natural world around her. In beguiling, lyrical prose we begin to see how Laura’s past informs her present and is a shackle she is desperately trying to shed. Before long though the villagers grow wary of the woman in the cabin and of her increasingly odd behavior, and a few decide to take matters into their own hands; to free themselves from the malevolent forces of the strega who lives amongst them.

At the Edge of the Woods is an evocative and unsettling story that grapples with themes of illness, infertility, and femininity to ask questions about how women have had to navigate or attempted to escape societal expectations both historically and today. Kathryn Bromwich is a spectacular, singular talent, and At the Edge of the Woods is a haunting, magnificent, spellbinding debut with the weight of an instant classic.