Spoiled Milk

Riffing on the long tradition of lesbian boarding school tales in which desire simmers beneath propriety, Curran sets her lush and haunting gothic debut at England’s Briarley School for Girls, a manor turned boarding school built on its founding family’s sugarcane fortune. When narrator Emily Locke’s classmate Violet Kirsch falls to her death from a balustrade after stealing a good night kiss with French teacher Élodie Lefèvre, rumors of their illicit attachment spread quickly. As Emily and her friends investigate, the line between innocent admiration and forbidden sapphic desire soon becomes blurred. Emily suspects Violet’s demise was no accident, but instead part of the broader rot of the institution she calls home. With the school’s supply of milk and food mysteriously souring, the students turn to spiritualism, séances, and a village medium for help. Briarley contains echoes of classic literary gothic manors like Thornfield Hall and Hill House and the narrative does a good job teasing out the dark history of slavery and empire packed into its bricks and mortar. On the way to Briarley’s bloody dissolution, Curran delivers a chilling tale of repressed passion, queer awakening, and the corrosive power of silence. It’s an impressive start. (Mar.)