Inspired by Virginia Woolf and following in the steps of George Orwell, Agnès de Clairville's novel Milk and Blood is a pastoral tale that is powerful, tragic and uplifting.
Deep in the French countryside, a farm holds its secrets close. The father buckles under mounting debts, two brothers circle each other in rivalry, and a mother tries desperately to carry the weight of the past. As the humans avert their gaze, it is the animals who bear witness, voicing the drama and violence that the humans strive to keep quiet. This move is narrated by the animals as they observe the humans who exploit, kill, and love them. There is the newborn calf who, expelled from the womb, is instantly removed from its mother. There is the spaniel, who spars with the tabby cat over the delicious colostrum from the calving cow. And then there is the magpie, who circles over the farmyard, missing nothing.
Death and life contract like a single, shimmering muscle, and a quiet devastation lies beneath the surface. Yet amidst this brutality, it is Clairville’s tenderness that is most affecting, as she draws poetry from mud and compassion from violence, in what is ultimately a declaration of love to those who feed us.
Translated from French by Frank Wynne
Linden Editions, 268pp, 13cm x 20cm, paperback, 2024, translated 2026
