Woodworm

By: Layla Martinez, Sophie Hughes - translator, Annie McDermott - translator

Narrated by: Raquel Beattie

The house breathes. The house contains bodies and secrets. The house is visited by ghosts, by angels that line the roof like insects, and by saints that burn the bedsheets with their haloes.

It was built by a smalltime hustler as a means of controlling his wife, and even after so many years, their daughter and her granddaughter can't leave. They may be witches or they may just be angry, but when the mysterious disappearance of a young boy draws unwanted attention, the two isolated women, already subjects of public scorn, combine forces with the spirits that haunt them in pursuit of something that resembles justice.

In this lush translation by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, Layla Martinez's eerie debut novel is class-conscious horror that drags generations of monsters into the sun. Described by Mariana Enriquez as "a house of women and shadows, built from poetry and revenge," this vision of a broken family in our unjust world places power in the hands of the eccentric, the radical, and the desperate.

©2021 Layla Martinez (P)2025 Tantor

The bodies in the wall stood out to me the most.

I disliked that there wasn’t a clear distinction between the grandmother speaking and the granddaughter speaking.
The translation of the book was great but if there were different voices for the grandmother and granddaughter, it would have been better understood.