This Novel Explores the True Story of the French City That Went Insane

On 15 August 1951, a small French city went mad. It began with studies of mass nausea and vomiting, however the state of affairs quickly deteriorated. Inside 48 hours, greater than 230 individuals in Pont Saint-Esprit had been struck with a mysterious mixture of illness, convulsions and hallucinations. Then individuals began leaping out of home windows. By the point the mud had settled nearly a fortnight later, 50 individuals have been interned in asylums, and 7 have been useless. A foodborne sickness was suspected, and investigations honed in in town’s bakery – it was stated to be a case of ache maudit, or “cursed bread”.

Anybody who has learn Sophie Waterproof coat’s earlier two novels, The Water Remedy and Blue Ticket, may guess that this unusual story would seize her creativeness. It appears to suit the writer’s literary sensibility nearly too completely – like a darkish fable, it’s suffused with surreality, violence, and the sense that the on a regular basis world will be immediately overturned and irrevocably altered. That’s earlier than we even get to the troubling idea that Pont-Saint-Esprit was not the sufferer of a dodgy batch of flour, however of a CIA subject take a look at of the consequences of LSD, as a part of a organic warfare program …

In Cursed Bread, Waterproof coat takes this disturbing and mysterious story and runs rings round it, to create a novel that itself feels considerably toxic – riddled with secrets and techniques and all-consuming obsessions, which threaten to spill out like deadly toxins. We see all by means of the eyes of Elodie, the baker’s spouse, whose sexual, emotional and mental unfulfillment collides with the arrival of two enigmatic strangers: the ambassador and his dark-haired, sharp-toothed spouse, Violet. What precisely are they doing within the city? Why are Violet’s wrists lined in bruises? And why, since they arrived, does Elodie’s actuality appear more and more unstable, liable to rupture at any second?

On a gray afternoon in Walthamstow, I spoke to Sophie Waterproof coat about speculative historical past, unreliable narrators, bread, and obsession.

Eloise Hendy: I’m so fascinated by the real-life story of what occurred at Pont-Saint-Esprit, and I puzzled the way you discovered about that. 

Sophie Waterproof coat: It was a couple of years in the past. I used to be simply scrolling by means of Twitter and it was a type of issues – “stranger than fiction! This bizarre city the place everybody misplaced their minds and hallucinated”, and I used to be like OK! However there wasn’t a lot written about it. Possibly there’s been a bit extra since then, however I simply thought it was such a bizarre story. And it wasn’t simply the precise story itself – although there was an entire city affected by hallucinations, which clearly is admittedly fascinating – however that there are all these bizarre theories round it. Possibly it was the CIA, perhaps it’s some type of thoughts management, perhaps it actually was simply poisoned flour. That’s additionally fairly disturbing in itself. You don’t actually anticipate bread to result in an occasion like that, ? Bread is so on a regular basis.

It simply despatched me into a little bit wormhole. I saved returning to it, and questioning what I might do with the thought of this city that mainly will get flipped on its head.

EH: The story nonetheless has this speculative high quality, as a result of nobody is aware of precisely what occurred. It feels such as you’re extra occupied with getting on the emotion of what might have occurred quite than the straight details, which is kind of a unique method of approaching a ‘historic novel’.

SM: I needed to make use of the story extra as a jumping-off level, I didn’t need to simply retell it. I’ve described it as ‘historic speculative’. Cursed Bread is a lot concerning the baker’s spouse, Elodie, and her emotions, and the connection between this couple, and that’s all fully fictional. If you’re writing about an actual occasion – and this was actually fairly a traumatic occasion – there’s a sense of accountability. I didn’t need to have something too drawn from actual life. Every part is totally fictionalised.

EH: You wrote Cursed Bread in the course of the pandemic. Did it really feel very totally different writing it then, by way of your course of, than writing the earlier two books?

SM: Sure the precise writing of it, I used to be simply in the home 12 hours a day and feeling actually unhinged, and I believe that undoubtedly got here by means of within the ebook. After I was writing it, really, [there was this feeling of] every little thing being tipped the other way up, being turned on its head, and the sense of claustrophobia, this sense of not understanding what was actual, this ambiance of suspicion and paranoia. I used to be like, really [these events are] not massively totally different. And within the ebook, the shadow of World Warfare II is all the time there as effectively, and the thought of this huge collective trauma that everybody has lived by means of already. And so I couldn’t assist pondering, we’re experiencing an enormous trauma now. What’s going to that do to our sense of actuality? What’s going to that do to our sense of how we see ourselves? Covid simply confirmed how simply the wheels do come off. It doesn’t take a lot for every little thing to immediately change.

“I used to be simply in the home 12 hours a day and feeling actually unhinged, and I believe that undoubtedly got here by means of within the ebook … Covid simply confirmed how simply the wheels do come off. It doesn’t take a lot for every little thing to immediately change” – Sophie Waterproof coat

EH: I really like how a lot of the ebook is about storytelling, and the instability of data and reality. Elodie admits that, in one other life, she “might have been a pathological liar”, and the ebook opens together with her saying “did it actually occur like this? And if it did, why not inform it otherwise?”

SM: It’s so a lot about narrative storytelling. I simply assume there are such a lot of ways in which one thing will be instructed. Elodie tells herself a narrative – she tells herself a narrative about falling in love with Violet, and a narrative about what Violet’s life is like. She’s simply current in her personal little world, primarily. I used to be speaking to somebody just lately and so they stated, “so did she hallucinate the entire thing? Did Violet and the Ambassador even exist?” And I used to be like no, they undoubtedly existed, however it’s fascinating that individuals would have that response. Though Elodie is such an unreliable narrator, I didn’t see her as fully fabricating different individuals. However I suppose there might be that ambiguity, even when it’s not what I initially meant. I used to be pondering extra concerning the narratives we inform ourselves about {our relationships}, different individuals’s relationships, the life we really feel like we must always have had, and the life we’re really having … she’s [also] so offended at the concept that she will be able to’t know every little thing she desires to know, and that’s a extremely comprehensible impulse for me. It could be good to know every little thing concerning the individuals we love. However you by no means really can.

I believe with Violet too – to not say she’s a boring character – however I believe obsession and want can actually mission issues onto individuals, and typically it’s not likely the individual, it’s the projecting that’s the fascinating factor. They usually all mission a lot onto her.

“[Elodie is] so offended at the concept that she will be able to’t know every little thing she desires to know, and that’s a extremely comprehensible impulse for me. It could be good to know every little thing concerning the individuals we love. However you by no means really can” – Sophie Waterproof coat

EH: It’s a really claustrophobic novel, however you always break up the narrative with letters Elodie writes to Violet within the current. How did you resolve on that type, and what was it capable of do for you?

SM: I needed to inform the story of the city, but in addition knew that I needed to look again from the place Elodie is now. And in that method, sow little easter eggs, or breadcrumbs. It’s a bizarre house, as a result of if the occasion, what occurs and what the story is constructing in direction of. However then you definately don’t essentially know every little thing, and you do not know what occurred to the characters. So I needed to slowly reveal that info whereas we’re additionally studying concerning the occasion. The letter type appeared like a great way to do this. Simply occupied with Elodie bodily writing down her ideas, and nearly making an attempt to elucidate herself, absolve herself, in a method. She’s telling her remaining story, she’s having her final phrase.

EH: Elodie is learn as secure and reliable, however clearly the reader is aware of that there’s uncertainty round her on a regular basis. Was that essential to you, always evoking the hole between what’s hidden and what’s on the floor?

SM: Utterly, and the thought of what you don’t see – you solely see part of it and you’ll completely misread it. She simply overhears a little bit little bit of a dialog between the ambassador and Violet, and he or she simply runs away with it. It turns into the premise of an obsession. I simply assume that hole between what we all know and what we don’t know is so fascinating to me. You’ll be able to actually let your creativeness run away with you. And why shouldn’t Elodie have this unimaginable internal life? Why shouldn’t she be passionate and need this stuff? Why can’t she be actually clever? Why can’t there be this complete a part of her that no one sees and has by no means actually been allowed to flourish?

That’s a part of the explanation I needed to have the present-day scenes too, as a result of although she’s very traumatised, and suffered this terrible occasion, she will get to have some company at the least, and be dwelling in a method this life that she did envy – not even the life she envied in Violet however a unique life, on her personal phrases. In her personal house and by herself. I assumed that was actually essential.

Cursed Bread by Sophie Waterproof coat is out now.