On Sundays She Picked Flowers

Scholfield makes a somewhat disjointed debut with this slickly stylish and graphically cannibalistic Southern gothic. In 1965, 41-year-old Judith “Jude” Rice still feels like a child thanks to her physically abusive mother, Ernestine. When Ernestine nearly beats Jude to death as she tries to leave her childhood home, Jude kills her mother in self-defense and flees to the town of Whitnee in Georgia’s Okefenokee swamplands, near the border with Florida. Jude’s two aunts cover up the murder while she takes up residence in Candle, an abandoned but supernaturally sentient former plantation. Candle and Jude arrive at a tentative detente as, over the course of 13 years, Jude embraces the literally bloodthirsty part of her nature—until the arrival of a strange and alluring woman named Nemoira causes her to confront how “unhuman” she is willing to become. While both give rise to some striking imagery, the story line about Jude’s relationship with Nemoira and the story line about Jude’s family, which returns in the finale, never successfully merge into one coherent narrative. Scholfield’s prose is impressive, if occasionally navel-gazing, and drenched in bodily effluvia. Though multiple scenes of Jude vomiting or violently carving up bodies will require readers to have strong stomachs, Caitlin Starling fans will enjoy this gory mix of toxic sapphic romance and body horror. (Jan.)