Little Wild

A Novel

By: Laura Evans

Narrated by: Tamaryn Payne

Weyward meets Atonement in a shimmering debut novel of first love, betrayal, and revenge set on a crumbling British estate

Suffolk, 1937. As the English countryside swelters in a historic heat wave, preparations for a party at Snare House are in full swing. The Winthers’ only daughter, Joanie, is returning from a summer on the Continent, a flying visit before she leaves for university at Oxford. Only Margaret, longtime ward of the family and Joanie’s closest friend, knows the truth: Joanie won’t be going to Oxford. Instead, the two will be leaving the stultifying society they know to live together in London, as lovers.

Then the pair is discovered, and everything goes wrong. Banished to a cabin in the nearby woods, Margaret is alone with her estranged father. As summer curdles into autumn and magpies throng the forest, Margaret begins to lose herself. Her dreams turn dark and terrifying, and she wakes from them with dirt on the soles of her feet and scratches on her back. Everything suggests that a perverse power is awakening within her—perhaps the very one that led to her mother’s ostracism and eventual death. If she can harness it, Margaret may be able to secure an approximation of the love she’s always crave—but at what cost?

Little Wild is at once a feminist fairy tale, a haunting meditation on the dangers of desire, and a gripping debut from a talented new voice.

Critic reviews

Praise for Little Wild

“A beguiling gothic debut, reminiscent of Du Maurier. Absolutely mesmerizing.”
—Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb

“Little Wild throws the door open on a long-ago summer in an English country house to reveal, in perfect prose, the secrets and passions within. It’s a study of sex, money and class between the wars and much more, gradually asserting its glorious weirdness with relish and masterful control. Snare House can claim a place with Atonement’s Tallis family home, The Little Stranger’s Hundreds Hall and Manderley in the list of places that haunt the reader long after the book has been closed. Debut novels don’t get much better than this.”
—Erin Kelly, author of He Said/She Said and The Poison Tree

“Little Wild is a country house novel with claws. Told in spiky, glittering prose, Laura Evans brings us into a world of simmering class tensions and long-buried secrets. As Margaret and Joanie’s plan unravels in the sweltering, claustrophobic heat, the novel shape-shifts into something almost mythical in its beauty and strangeness.”
—Danielle Giles, author of Mere