The Spoil

“Grief, life, and mysterious phenomena, all in one absorbing account–to be read with the lights on.”–Kirkus Reviews

“Maile Chapman is an intricate, eerie plotter with a knack for unsettling… . This is a book that takes on the utter strangeness of grief.”–Literary Hub

“What a wondrous and strange book! The Spoil centers on a complicated mother-daughter relationship and its possible supernatural underpinnings. It’s a page-tuner that’s fueled by horror, confusion, and love.”–Darcy Steinke

“By tuning in to the most fragile things of this world–whether people or objects or phenomena–Maile Chapman is able to see through to the unstoppable force of life. The Spoil traverses the always-permeable membranes between our homes and our histories, between neighbors and creatures and intimates, between the known and the unknown. It is a book about caretaking in its myriad forms, about beauty and danger, one that dares to make a record of ordinary life so relentless that in the end every humble crack of concrete and accumulation of dirt hums its own true profundity. This is a frighteningly loving tale of persistence that is at once cosmic and minute.”–Lucy Corin, author of The Swank Hotel

“Psychological horror like you’ve never encountered it. A shimmering, holographic, cerebral desert thriller of extremity, equal parts heart-rending and terrifying. The Spoil is a masterful inquiry of possession(s), in every sense of the term.”–Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love

Maile Chapman is the author of Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto, a finalist for the Guardian First Book Award and the PEN Center USA literary award. She teaches in the English and Creative Writing International Program at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

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