Everything about the summary to Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran (out March 10, thank you to Doubleday for the ARC) made me so unbearably excited to read it. “The untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school turns out to be the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events. A thrilling debut novel about teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age.” Boarding school fiction? Haunted boarding school fiction? Haunted boarding school fiction rife with repressed queer desire amidst a backdrop of strict conformity and also Spiritualism? Sign me up immediately!! And I am delighted to report that this book exceeded my expectations and was a wildly good time if you are at all interested in any of those elements. It starts off quickly and clicks along, drawing you deeper into Briarley’s worsening atmosphere and the stew of teenage hormones, fear, and repression.
Emily and her fellow year mates are Briarley are shocked and devastated when head girl Violet suffers a seeming accident and falls to her death, especially Evelyn, with whom Emily competed for Violet’s favor. But that’s just the start, as things at Briarley slowly start getting worse. Food is spoiled, teachers are not acting like themselves, and more accidents happen. Desperate, the girls contact a medium in hopes of reaching out for Violet’s secret, but what’s happening at Briarley is deeper than one girl’s tragic death. The girls race against the creeping wrongness and their own internal tensions to find the root of the rot and save themselves.
The atmosphere here was impeccable. A boarding school is always an excellent place for either queer yearning and awakening OR haunting, and having both was like having a dessert buffet. As the girls creep up and down the narrow stairs, try to pay attention to classes that are still happening, and cram into narrow and cold rooms, the sense of wrongness grows and the feeling of being trapped sets in. The setting is also rather isolated, which makes outside interference or assistance difficult. It’s a special production to get into town to contact the medium, and there’s a real sense that the local populace doesn’t think of the school as part of them. All in all, it makes for cracking good atmospheric horror that left me riveted.
The girls themselves were also a delight. The mix of strict rules and routines and teenage feelings is always entertaining, especially because the main character Emily herself does not understand her feelings at first. It quickly becomes clear to the reader that she does not understand why she competes for Violet’s attentions and does her all sorts of favors, or why she has such antipathy for Evelyn, who does the same. I also enjoy that the rest of their year mates seem to know more about what’s going on than those involved do. As a coming out arc, I feel like it will be very familiar to a lot of people, and it’s so fun to read from the outside. As the group gets deeper into their spiritualist investigations, the stakes rise because you also grow quite attached to the whole group.
If you are adding one horror book to your list this winter, I would make a strong case for Spoiled Milk. It’s so fun, and it knows what to do with all the plot elements at its disposal. The escalation is well balanced, and the tension is exquisite. All in all, this is one of my favorite horror books that I have read in quite some time.
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