Gloss

Description

Transposing the Greek myth of the Hesperides nymphs (guarding the Golden Apples in the legend of Hercules) to Marin County at the turn of the millennium, Gloss is an unconventional psychological thriller with feminist bite. Apple farmer Lee Lotan is a passionate cook who runs an alternative therapy programme for young women suffering from an unnamed eating disorder. Ari, Eleni and Hesper meet at his farm, Golden Apples, one summer. His seemingly benevolent methods have a long-term impact on his young charges. A year later, a trial is underway and the girls reunite to testify. From the chorus of their voices emerges a surreal, kaleidoscopic picture of trauma and its aftermath: ambivalence, guilt, denial, lingering fascination, and the gaps left by things too difficult to speak aloud. As the story reaches its surreal climax, the girls discover the incompetence of the criminal justice system and the cathartic delights of personal revenge. Wilder paints desire and disgust alike in sensuous, delicate prose which captures the magnetic pull of forbidden fruit.

Reviews

Praise for Gloss

• 'Taut and vivid. It is like stepping into a delicately described hallucinatory nightmare and I was completely mesmerised all the way through. The themes of coercive control and psychological disintegration are so chilling and important.' - Suzanne Joinson, author of The Museum of Lost and Fragile Things


• 'A subtle, powerful and compact novel. A strong contender for the 2025 Women's Prize.' - Paul Fulcher

Praise for Little Bandaged Days

• 'Gripping, composed, observant, wonderfully written and extravagantly cruel.[...] The story comes closer to reality when it dramatises something wider: the performance of an enviable lifestyle, and the various miseries that make this performance possible.' - Daisy Hildyard, Guardian


• 'Beautifully written and frighteningly honest, this feverish debut delivers a brave appraisal of a woman's spiral into madness.' - Sunday Express


• 'Wilder artfully cranks up the tension, so you don't quite know when you begin to hold your breath. A chilling read' - Oyinkan Braithwaite, author of My Sister, the Serial Killer

 

 

 

Author Biography:

Kyra Wilder grew up in the Pacific Northwest and went on to study at the Culinary Institute of America. She cooked in restaurants in California and New York and was the pasta-maker in Michael Tusk's now Michelin-starred restaurant Quince, before receiving her BA and MA in English Literature from San Francisco State University. She continued working in restaurants before moving to Switzerland with her young family, where she wrote her critically acclaimed first novel Little Bandaged Days (2020). She has had poetry and articles published in The Paris Review and McSweeney's. Gloss is her second novel, and her first to be published by Les Fugitives.