Ep 704 - Cursed Bread, by Sophie Mackintosh

Summary

Overdue Podcast Episode 704: "Cursed Bread" by Sophie Mackintosh

Release Date: May 26, 2025

In Episode 704 of the Overdue podcast, hosted by Andrew and Craig from Headgum, the duo delves into Sophie Mackintosh's enigmatic novel, "Cursed Bread." This episode offers a comprehensive exploration of the book's intricate narrative, thematic elements, and the authors' personal reactions, enriched with insights from listener feedback and critical reviews.

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1. Introduction to "Cursed Bread" and Sophie Mackintosh

The episode begins with Craig introducing the book, highlighting its publication in 2023 and its longlisting for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Mackintosh, renowned for her debut novel "The Water Cure" (2018), which was longlisted for the Booker Prize, is portrayed as a significant contemporary British author.

Notable Quote:

• "It's an honor just to be listed." – Craig [05:16]

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2. Author Background and Influences

Andrew and Craig provide an in-depth look into Sophie Mackintosh's background. Born in 1988 in South Wales and raised bilingual in Welsh and English, Mackintosh's upbringing plays a pivotal role in her storytelling. Her early foray into poetry significantly influences her prose style. Educated at Warwick University, known for its esteemed writing program, Mackintosh has been lauded in publications like Granta, The Stinging Fly, and Stylist.

Craig shares insights from Mackintosh's interviews, revealing her self-description as an "arty goth teenager" who initially considered careers in fashion design or photography before committing to writing as the most flexible medium for her creative expression.

---

3. Plot Overview of "Cursed Bread"

"Cursed Bread" intertwines a historical event with personal narratives, set against the backdrop of Pont Saint Esprit, a commune on the Rhône River in France. The novel fictionalizes the 1951 bread-related mass poisoning incident, where contaminated bread led to widespread hysteria, illness, and fatalities.

Andrew summarizes the plot, emphasizing the protagonist Elodie's internal struggles juxtaposed with the chaotic events engulfing her town. Elodie, a baker married to the town's breadmaker, grapples with unfulfilled sexual desires, leading her to develop an obsession with Violet, a newcomer married to the Ambassador.

Notable Quote:

• "May your futures be symmetrical, adoring and sponsored as long as you live." – Elodie in her letter to Violet [12:31]

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4. Themes and Narrative Structure

The hosts dissect the novel's exploration of desire, obsession, and the impact of patriarchal structures on women's lives. Mackintosh employs an unreliable narrator in Elodie, whose fragmented and obsessive thoughts blur the lines between reality and hallucination, mirroring the mass hysteria caused by the cursed bread.

Craig draws parallels between Mackintosh's atmospheric tension and the surrealism found in David Lynch's works, noting the novel's "gauzy fever dream quality" and its ability to keep readers perpetually on edge.

Notable Quote:

• "Few of us need reminding of all the ways it is terrible to be a woman in the world." – Guardian Review by Joe Hamya [51:05]

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5. Critical Reception and Listener Feedback

Andrew and Craig incorporate perspectives from Goodreads reviews and listener comments from their Discord community. While some listeners appreciate the book's stylistic risks and psychological depth, others find the narrative's opaqueness and nonlinear structure challenging.

Listener Quote:

• "Have you ever loved someone so much you fed them broken glass? Yes. Yes, good read." – Bev from Discord [30:48]

The Guardian's review by Joe Hamya is cited, praising Mackintosh's ability to intertwine personal despair with broader societal critiques, though it notes the thin portrayal of male characters.

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6. Comparisons to Other Works

The hosts draw comparisons between "Cursed Bread" and films like "Black Swan" and "Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me," highlighting the shared themes of psychological distress and the blurring of reality. These comparisons underscore the novel's capacity to evoke a tense and unsettling atmosphere, keeping readers in a state of suspense.

Notable Quote:

• "It is both foreshadowed in the way that Elodie writes about, like, past events... and there's this one scene and nothing ever comes of it. So again, is it real? Is it not? I don't know." – Andrew [29:12]

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7. Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Andrew and Craig reflect on their personal experiences reading "Cursed Bread," acknowledging both their appreciation for its atmospheric intensity and the challenges posed by its complex narrative structure. They encourage listeners to engage with the book's ambiguous storytelling to fully grasp its thematic depths.

Notable Quote:

• "It's trying to be difficult, which makes it more difficult." – Andrew [54:17]

The episode concludes with teasers for upcoming books and invitations for listeners to join their community discussions via Patreon and social media platforms.

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8. Additional Resources and Recommendations

• Listener Engagement: Listeners are encouraged to share their bread recipes (sans dangerous additives) and Sophie Mackintosh's takes on social media.
• Future Reads: Upcoming episodes will feature "Gilead" by Marilyn Robinson and "James" by Percival Everett.

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Conclusion

Episode 704 of Overdue offers a nuanced and layered discussion of Sophie Mackintosh's "Cursed Bread," blending author insights, thematic analysis, and community feedback. Andrew and Craig provide listeners with a thorough understanding of the novel's complexities, inviting both appreciation and critical reflection.

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For more information and to support the show, visit OverduePodcast.com or become a patron at Patreon.com/overduepod. Follow them on Blue Sky and Instagram @OverduePod for updates and discussions.

Transcript

[Andrew]

This is a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

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[Craig]

That's exactly. That's how mobile should work.

[Andrew]

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[Craig]

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[Andrew]

Payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 a month. New customer offer for first 3 months only. Then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See Mint Mobile for details.

[Craig]

While Andrew and Craig believe the joy of discovery is crucial to enjoying any well told tale, they will not shy.

[Andrew]

Away from spoiling specific story beats when necessary.

[Craig]

Plus, these are books you should have read by now. Hello everybody. Welcome to Overdue, a podcast about the books you've been meaning to read. My name is Craig.

[Andrew]

My name is Andrew. What a strong start.

[Craig]

Zootalor.

[Andrew]

You love, love to. To break into a podcast with this, this energy.

[Craig]

Break into Frangl. I actually don't know if that. What if it's Franglay? Like what is the kind of agreed upon term for messy English friend? Like kind of Spanglish is a word that's out there, you know.

[Andrew]

Sure, sure, sure.

[Craig]

I think it might be Franglay, but I'm not sure that's.

[Andrew]

I mean it's better if we would. We don't know because we've gone this many. Gone this many years without putting a label on it. I don't know why we would need to start out.

[Craig]

It's just me that's.

[Andrew]

It's just the thing. It's just the thing that you do. And, like, French people are supposed to find it mostly charming instead of mostly offensive.

[Craig]

They don't need to find me charming at all. They can. They can write in and tell me. They can tell me how to pronounce Le Pam Modi not related to cool modi at all. They can tell me how to.

[Andrew]

If cool mo D was going to have, like, a Panera style bread. Like a bread centric.

[Craig]

Yeah, but you. But everyone be like, don't go there. Don't go there, please. Esprit is the town of this. Whatever. We got to talk about our book podcast.

[Andrew]

It's never really, like, named the narrative at all until you get to the one paragraph at the end where Sophie McIntosh is like, this is what I was doing.

[Craig]

Okay, can't wait to find out. This is our book podcast where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it. Andrew, read the book this week. Andrew, what book did you read?

[Andrew]

Cursed bread by Sophie McIntosh. This is the bad bread, guys.

[Craig]

The bad bread. This is the bad bread in French. Le pam O D. Relevant because it takes place in France, we think. Or it's inspired by historian France.

[Andrew]

You've heard of the beach that makes you old. This is the bread that makes you go nuts.

[Craig]

Go nuts.

[Andrew]

It's like that. The beach.

[Craig]

This book, published in 2023, was long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Mackintosh's debut novel the water Cure in 2018 was long listed for the Booker Prize. I bet one of these days she's going to get off the list and get the thing itself from somewhere. Probably from one of these.

[Andrew]

Better to be listed than not listed, I guess.

[Craig]

True. I would love to be listed. List me.

[Andrew]

Mm. You put me right at the bottom at long list, too. You don't need. I don't need to be short. I don't need to be on the short one.

[Craig]

It's an honor just to be listed.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

So we're going to talk about Macintosh. We're going to talk about the book and the historical event it is nominally inspired by. I have a very good Goodreads review I want to share about that. I have not heard of Sophie McIntosh until you brought this book to me. Andrew. For discussion, I presume.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

This is one to you.

[Andrew]

This is one of the classic just looking for some short books that inspired a reaction and people who do book lists and I'm talking about people who write lists of books to read and not AIs that publish them in national newspapers based on made up books. That was in the news recently.

[Craig]

Episode. I was so frustrated because like I saw that story about the summer reading AI list popping up online being like hahaha. Chicago Sun Times.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And then I went to work.

[Craig]

I went to work and someone was like did you see it was in the Philly Inquirer. I was like no, they got us too.

[Andrew]

We did it.

[Craig]

They did it.

[Andrew]

No, we did the dang thing.

[Craig]

But this book again, published in 2023. Let's talk about Macintosh. Born in 1988 from South Wales, grew up in Pembrokeshire out on the coast. She talks about how she was raised bilingual in Welsh and English, went to a school where she was educated in Welsh from age 4 and has talked about how that influences some of her writing. She started writing mostly in poetry and that also informs her prose style. She said in one interview that she was a quote, arty goth teenager. Weren't we all? And she thought she might be a fashion designer or photographer, but found that writing was more useful. There were no limitations of materials on her means of expression.

[Andrew]

Okay.

[Craig]

She went and studied at Warwick University which has a very celebrated writing program. They were very excited to celebrate her upon her multiple successes. Found a couple of articles on their website about her. She was published in Granta, the Stinging Fly and Stylist, among others. Before she had gotten her first novel published. She was named one of the best young British novelists in Granta. They have like a. Every decade they put out a list of the best ones. She made it. You know, it's an honor to be.

[Andrew]

Listed like a 30 under 30 quality. Or is it just I think what's. What's young like young relative to.

[Craig]

It might be 30 or 40, I'm not sure what the 30.

[Andrew]

I'm 30 or 40 years old and people think my writing is good.

[Craig]

She's been a writer in residence at the Paris Writers Residency, the Prague City of Literature Residency, Gladstone's Library. She lives and works in London and yeah, after several short stories and other writing. I want to talk about some of her other writing I read that did come out after the Water Cure that was published in 2018 or so I don't. She was on the 2018 Booker list, so maybe it was published earlier than that. She wrote it in 2016. And that is a book that's like. It's like sort of dystopian. Post Apoc something or other. It's kind of hazy and unclear, which is a quality.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I'm sorry, what?

[Craig]

Yeah, Post Apoc.

[Andrew]

You can't do post Apoc.

[Craig]

Ad hoc proto. What is it? What's that? Ad.

[Andrew]

I.

[Craig]

Ad hoc, prostapoc.

[Andrew]

Something like, you just can't like. Did. Have you read Post Apoc somewhere else or did you just make.

[Craig]

I think I got it from the Internet. Yeah, I think it just slipped in there. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Andrew]

It's fine.

[Craig]

No, I'm not. I'm not fighting for it. It just popped out.

[Andrew]

It's just I. I was convinced sometimes when people try to save time by using kind of phrase like that, but I find it kind of personally annoying. I do make it my business to be like, man, we would have just saved more time if you just said the regular.

[Craig]

Yeah, no, you're right. You're right. That book is. You know, she said it was written in 2016 and was dealing with a feeling of what it meant to be a happy and healthy woman living with patriarchal structures at a time when I felt powerless and angry often. We all know how folks felt in 2016.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And it is way back. Way back then.

[Craig]

It is a dystopian fairy tale.

[Andrew]

Much different. Different time than the time we live in now.

[Craig]

Yeah. Set on an island where this guy's d. This guy's been telling his daughters that, like, contact with men can be toxic and deadly. It. It. From the reviews I read, it seems a little unclear what is true and what is not in that tale. And that seems to be kind of the point of it. This kind of like the parents have constructed an alternate reality around their children and is. It is abusive and controlling and. And what is the result of that seems to be what that book's about. The Blue ticket in 2020 has this. It's Handmaid's tale adjacent. There are women who can only be mothers through a lottery of like blue and white tickets. And then this woman gets a ticket that says, you can't be a mother. And it plot happens from there in terms of her still wanting to be one and things like that. And then this one, 2023, is inspired by this thing that happened in France that we'll talk about where a bunch of people ate bread and drove them bananas. Banana bread.

[Andrew]

Not banana. Not banana bread. Bananas bread.

[Craig]

But before we get to that I do want to mention. There's some, like, she just has, like, good, interesting writing that's out there that is not fiction. She wrote a piece in the New York Times in 2019 called Feminine Weakness is a Scam that was part of some, like, larger philosophies. The idea of the New York Times publishing a philosophy series seems both like, what are you doing? And also, of course. But it talks about, like, the women, the power that women wield as they navigate patriarchy. Both like, power that is sustaining and also power that is destructive. I found it to be an interesting piece that is worth reading. And then I also like that she's just out there while telling basically anybody who will listen how much she loves the reality show Love island, which she really latched onto when it was premiered. Her. Her partner was going through cancer at this, at the time, and she just kind of latched on to it and found it really compelling. And she wrote about it in 2018 for the new York Times. Modern Love. Marooned on Love Island. And just like, her writing sounds pretty good, she just like, drops in this line where she's talking to quote, unquote, talking to the contestants of the show about how they've helped her and how she wishes the best for them. May you never know the terror of your future changing before your eyes. Children and homes and plans evaporating. May your futures be symmetrical, adoring and sponsored as long as you live.

[Andrew]

There's that very old Onion article that's like a feminist trying to watch a reality show and just like, asking the part of her brain turn off so she can enjoy it and not have to think about it. Yep, that's what I get from Sophie McIntosh watching Love Island.

[Craig]

She's. Yeah, she seems earnest in her appreciation of it. So let's talk about. Is there anything else about her background, Andrew, before we talk about this Bread city that happened. That's bread.

[Andrew]

No, no, not really.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Now, this. This book, like, it's. It's. It's pretty short. It is like, it's trying not to be straightforward, but in. In. In that is creating a vibe that is kind of straightforward to.

[Craig]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

For lack of a better way to put it. So, like, I. It's kind of resisted me having any kind of, like, strong take or response to it. So I don't like. We'll just talk about what we talk about. But yeah, it's good to start with what the event is, and then I can tell you how the book approaches it and then what the. Most of the Book ends up being about.

[Craig]

Okay, sure. Some of this I'm pulling from an interview she did with the quietest dot com. There's a lot of interviews with her about the water cure out there that are easy to find. A fewer on cursed bread specifically. But she said that she was reading about this event that happened in Paul St. Esprit in France in 1951 where several hundred people were struck by this bread based madness and physical illness. And at least four people died, dozens were put in asylums and you know, hundreds were injured. And it happened over a course of a few days. And there was, it was traced to this one bakery where something went wrong. And she is reading about it. She is struck by this mass hysteria and theories. There was a guy who came out in 2009 who was like, I found articles that proves it's the CIA. The CIA did it. It's LSD from the CIA.

[Andrew]

Oh God.

[Craig]

And that's, you know, obviously decades after the French government, you know, tried to just do their investigation and be done with it.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And like the consensus explanation is like food safety wasn't great. There were a lot of, there was like a specific way that the, the government like controlled who got what flour from who. And this was just like low quality flour from some guy who was not like super stringent about what he put in the flour that he made. And everybody got like crazy from some fungus.

[Craig]

Yeah, it's. It's ergot or ergo, E, R, G O T. Ergo. Ergo. Ergo you have crazy bread. It's a fungus that grows.

[Andrew]

We don't want the Little Caesar's people coming at us. We can't drag their bread through the mud.

[Craig]

This is what I believe. They ruled what happened. It's a fungus that infects cereal grains like rye. I was reading a mental floss article and then my only note just says wet, hot French summer because all the raw, it was a really damp year and all the rye got wet and then they got the fungus. That seems to be one of the.

[Andrew]

Explanations is what the Last of Us is about.

[Craig]

It's true. There's also a theory put forward by a historian, Stephen Kaplan, who wrote a book that came out in 2008 called Le Pam Modi. He's also writing about the post Vichy era of France and kind of using this as a jumping off point. I think that's where we get a lot of the scholarship on also the controls on, on bread supply and things like that, because that was holdovers from the Vichy government. But he says the fungus stuff may or may not be the best explanation. It could. Also, there's a whole other vein of reasoning that says it's like grain bleach, like in the era of early white bread, like American white bread. There are similar. There's similar evidence that, like, early whitening agents and bleaching agents were causing bad effects. So it could have been that as well.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Yeah. And as we discussed when we talked about Upton Sinclair's the Jungle, some of the things that were done to meat in that book, but just like food in general, to make it look or seem pure.

[Craig]

Better. Yeah.

[Andrew]

Were in fact pretty deleterious to the quality of the food.

[Craig]

So she says she went from a standpoint of someone should write a book about this too. I should write a book about this. But she didn't want to just do a retelling of historical events. So that is what I'm interested to hear about when we get into the book itself, because you tell me that this is a book about a town where people got cursed bread. And then from what I've read about this book, she zagged when she could have zigged in many places or at least is unwilling to do the zigzag at all. Maybe she wants to do something else.

[Andrew]

It's only, like, tangentially about the. The bread poisoning incident. In fact, there's some, like, the. The main character has a bunch of, like, problems. Brainwashed.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

That. I don't know. Are the whole. The whole bread poisoning thing happens, like, off to the side.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Of whatever it is that she is dealing with inside her own mind. So that is. That is most of what the book is.

[Craig]

She said that she tried to get the structure to reflect the act of ruminating her words, that the main character is obsessed with knowing everything, but she can't. And that's infuriating to her. She said she was very interest influenced by a book that she loves called A Sport and Pastime by James Salter. It is centered on a love affair in 60s France that is narrated by someone not involved in the affair at all. She. She wrote the book like three or four times. Macintosh did. Trying to find the right perspective characters and trying to find this kind of oblique way into this event was her goal. And it, you know, took her further away from the event itself. So that's kind of her way in. I think I've covered most of the other stuff I had on this incident, other than that this town in as much as the book is based on it. Pointe St. Esprit is a commune on the Rhone River. It's famous for being the town of origin of Michel Bouvier, who's an ancestor of Jackie Kennedy's dad, I guess. Okay, yes, there's lots of theories, from ergot poisoning to mercury to mycotoxins to nitrogen trichloride, which is the bleaching agent or LSD from the CIA.

[Andrew]

Right.

[Craig]

If it is ergot poisoning that has like two different effects on the body, one is like messing with your brain and one is causing gangrenous stuff. That was likely the cause of the dancing plague of 1518. Other than just general mass flash mob.

[Andrew]

Behavior, this sounds like a fun plague.

[Craig]

And ultimately this led to the arrest of two bakers with the understanding that they mixed some contaminated rye, even though I think some other people may or may not have done jail time as well. And that's, that's what I got this. I will pull this one graph from a New York Times article about the Steven Kaplan book just to let you know like, what all of the hallucinating was about in this town. A worker tried to drown himself because his belly was being eaten by snakes. A 60 year old grandmother threw herself against the wall and broke three ribs. A man saw his heart escaping through his feet and beseeched a doctor to put it back in place. Many were taken to the local asylum in straitjackets. There was no treatment, no cure, and only one possible explanation. Something in the bread baked the night of August 15th to 16th had caused the calamity. And now we enter Sophie McIntosh's cursed bread. Andrew?

[Andrew]

Yeah, like, I think that the, the bread is clearly the, like, that's the one agreed upon element is that people who did eat the bread had a bad time and people who did not eat the bread for some reason were fine.

[Craig]

Yes, that's true.

[Andrew]

It's just everything after that that's a little up for gr. So this is like I, I did not, I, I think I did remember that the, the, the book was based on like a historical event, but I just didn't retain any of like when.

[Craig]

Or, or you didn't come into your read with it handy.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Right. So I didn't, I didn't know off the bat that the, you know, the whole thing was in like night France in 1951.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And the book does not really take any pains to like make you, like to get you up on that fast either. Like you're spending, you're spending all of your time in the head of Elodie, who is the main character she is a young. What?

[Craig]

What? Just saying her name. Extra French. It's fine.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Thank you.

[Craig]

Elodie is fine.

[Andrew]

That's what I read. That was an acceptable.

[Craig]

Yeah, no, that's probably what we should say, actually.

[Andrew]

She. And it's. It's jumping back and forth between a couple of different, like, versions of her perspective. One is contemporary with the events that are happening in the run up to this bread poisoning incident. And then one is clearly after the fact, after some kind of fact, something that police are, like, periodically coming to question her about wherever she is living now. And they're in the form of these letters to this woman named Violet, who Melody is thinking about all the time. And, yeah, I'm not even going to frame this as criticism of the book, but one of the things about the book that just made it a weird, kind of a strange read for me is I feel like the voice is very modern in a way that does not, like, lodge the setting firmly in. In your head, like. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Craig]

Do you have an example? Do you have, like, a.

[Andrew]

Well, so, okay, so Elodie is. Is. She's married to the. The. This bread maker. She also works in the bakery.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

They make. They make bread for this town. Everything's fine. And she really wants her husband to pay attention to her sexually, like, really, really bad.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And is always trying to initiate things, and he's not interested in it. And so she finds herself becoming obsessed with this woman, Violet, who has just moved into town, and her husband, the Ambassador, and they, like, you know, they meet at a party, and Elodie is just kind of lightly obsessed with Violet. And they never actually, like. Violet kisses her once, but they never actually, like, consummate anything. But Elodie's just thinking about it all the time.

[Craig]

Great. I will share a note from our discord patreon.com overdue pod if you want to join the discord. Nora said, I felt bad for Elodie throughout, but I was also annoyed that she kept wanting to have sex with the ambassador. I look forward to hearing more about that because she was obsessed with Violet. Girl, that's not who you want to have sex with. Thanks, Nora.

[Andrew]

The other thing about Elodie's perspective is it's one of those books where the. The. The protagonist talks all the time about how unreliable her own narration is.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

She's always talking about, like, here, I'm gonna tell you about things. And these are things that I sit around thinking about, and they're so vivid that it's like they happened Even if they didn't happen. And so sometimes, like, am I. Do I think all of these things happen? I don't know. I'm not even sure I'm Elodie. I'm an unreliable narrator.

[Craig]

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Andrew]

And so I think those two things kind of combine to make the read sort of strange to me. Like, the character of Elodie just does not, like, stick out a ton to me.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Yeah. Here's a passage from one of those letters that she is writing to Violet. Every other chapter. Did your husband ever tell you about the times he visited me in the bakery? Perhaps he would have kept that a secret. Or perhaps you laughed at it together. Or perhaps it was so unimportant he forgot. Forgot it as soon as it had happened. As I remember it, my skin turned to dough under his hands, rising, yielding. These are the sorts of things I see now. No longer. Being shackled to reality has its benefits. For instance, he never kissed me. But when I want to, I can imagine it differently. The audacity of memory can be staggering. The liberties I can take in, the things I can give myself. His hot mouth, Stubbled. A mouth that could be any man's, really. His mouth becomes your mouth. The kiss in the dressing room that was never repeated. Your sharp fingernails at the base of my skull. It's often like this when I'm drunk. The memories slip into each other, unraveling. You are both there. Touchable, though I hate myself for it. And yet. So this. This is just what Elodie is thinking about a lot. It's just, like, wanting. Like, her feelings for these two people are intertwining a lot. There are scenes, like. There's one scene where the ambassador comes into the bakery and, like, demands that Elodie touch herself. And then, like, she does it, and then he leaves, like, before she can finish. And she feels complicated about it. Yeah, she seems lightly to be into, like, being humiliated, but. But she doesn't. She's like, you can't just. You can't just do that. You can't just mainline that always. No, it's also, like, humiliating.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

And, yeah, there are things that she just, like, wants to be into. But then there's a scene where Violet, like, whips her. Is this real or not? I can't. I couldn't possibly tell you. I don't know.

[Craig]

Okay. And you said these are all letters to Violet.

[Andrew]

No, they're not all letters to Violet. This is all stuff that gets, like, interspersed. Like, okay, there are letters to Violet that happen, and then There are chapters where it's Elodie, and she's hanging out and she works at the bakery, and, you know, she's in this, like, washing circle with all these women, and they all gossip. And. Yes, it's just all so. And okay, so the whole. The whole book happens. And then there's this. This final conference. There's this final scene where Elodie. It, like, goes to a hotel on the outskirts of town because she thinks the ambassador, like, implied that he would meet her out there.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And she goes to that hotel, and he never shows up. And then Elodie comes back to town and goes to Violet's house, and Violet's like, you're an idiot. You thought this was gonna happen. It was never gonna happen. And Violet, like, whips her. And Elodie says, man, I really. I was really hoping to feel horny about this, but it just hurts, and this is a bummer for me. And then she leaves. And as she's leaving the house, she notices that it's very loud in town. Like, there's a festival happening. And then she, like, goes inside and her husband's, like, sick in bed. And you hear. And you hear everything else that you hear about. Like, the Bread Madness incident from A Letter to Violet, where it's like, man, did you even know what happened in town after you. Oh, no, I left her house that time.

[Craig]

Oh, no.

[Andrew]

And she goes into a couple of little, you know, vignettes. Like, there's the one thing about the guy and the snakes, and there's one thing where the, like, the butcher, like, takes his own knife and, like, sticks it into his body. And she describes it in great graphic detail. Do you remember? Like, the only comparison point I can really think of for this book is. You remember movie back? Black Squat, Black Swan.

[Craig]

Yeah, I remember it. I didn't see it, but I know of it, but I. But I am aware of it.

[Andrew]

There's. So this is a movie from, like, 2010, 2011, somewhere in there. And it is a movie that's essentially about, like, ballet. But what it actually ends up being about is, like, mental illness and also really making you hyper aware of how, like, fragile and sensitive your body is. And the experience of watching it is just to, like, be coiled up in your seat the whole time, really tense. And, like, it's impressive because that's exactly what you think that the movie wants you to be feeling. It's an unpleasant and unsettling and unmooring sort of feeling that does not invite, like, repeat viewings.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

Of that film. And that is. That was kind of how I felt reading Cursed Bread. Because the whole vibe, the whole time is just like, very. It's tense because you're, like, waiting for something bad to happen the whole time.

[Craig]

Yeah. So.

[Andrew]

And that's like. And that's like. It's both foreshadowed in the way that Elodie writes about, like, past events. Like, you know, that the police are coming to talk to her about things, and there's some. Some event happened and she's always thinking about, like, sex and blood all the time.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And also, just like, that's like. There's. There's this one scene and nothing ever comes of it. So again, is it real? Is it not? I don't know. She makes a little tart in the bakery for Violet, and with all the sugar and stuff, she crushes up a lot, little tiny bits of glass and just mixes it in with the sugar and bakes it into the tart and then makes Violet eat the whole thing in front of her and just. Just like, trying to hurt her or something, I guess. But it's never mentioned again.

[Craig]

So one of our. One of our astute. One of our astute listeners. Okay, so the conversation in our discord. This is helpful because. And it is relevant. It was a mix of people going, like, this book is for me, and people going, this book is not for me. But they agreed that it was A, a very horny book and B, a very interesting book. And Bev, who said that it was very. For them, shared a comment that they had made about this book, which was Cursed Bread. Good. Have you ever loved someone so much you fed them broken glass? Yes. Yes. Good read. Book which is like, okay, I guess.

[Andrew]

That is what it is.

[Craig]

I can't remember if I mentioned it on last week's episode or another recent episode, but as you know, Andrew, I've been watching a lot of David lynch lately, and there is. That is another thing that has this, like, what am I watching? Is it real? Like, I just watched Fire Walk with Me, the Twin Peaks movie, for the first time, which is a very dark and upsetting object. I understand why people did not like it when it first went into theaters, and I understand why people think it is actually very, very good now that I've seen it. But it does have this, like, what am I? What is real? What is going to happen in the next 10 seconds? Because the prevailing vibe is that at any given moment something bad is going to happen, and I don't really know why or to whom or to what the cause is going to be. Even. Or what even the nature of the bad thing I'm supposed to be expecting is. And the other thing that makes me think of something like a Lynch. And this might be putting too much on Macintosh's style, but it's the frame reference I have. Having not read the book, she said in one interview that she is interested in focusing on interiors, the poisoning of desire versus the poisoning of a larger community. So I want to hear if there's more you can say about Elodie's desires in the book. I want to hear more about that. But she also said that there was something about this community that she thought was sepia tinted, but that there's something off kilter underneath and that feels lynch adjacent. Like his. The whole thing with Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks is this like Americana. But there's junk under there. There's dirty bad stuff under it.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And while this is not traffic in Americana and it's actually kind of very opaque in where it is said in the first place.

[Andrew]

Yeah. It's like nonspecific enough that it could be Americana. It's just like good old times. Like it's. We're after a war. And if anybody's talking about a war like that, you're going to assume is World War II.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

It's like before computers.

[Craig]

It is before computers.

[Andrew]

In the time after the war, but before computer.

[Craig]

Okay, sure.

[Andrew]

But other than that. Yeah, super. It could be anywhere.

[Craig]

But it is like she is interested in the. There's a community here, but then there's something private inside. She was also. You mentioned that wash house where like the women are gossiping together. That was another thing that stood out to her as like. As she's researching this town in the community. Like that struck her as a. A female only space where like certain character things can happen and certain scenes can happen that are very specific that she was interested in. But can you tell me a little bit more if there's anything else to say about like the nature of Elodie's desire?

[Andrew]

Yeah. Like if.

[Craig]

Terrible relationship with her husband.

[Andrew]

Yeah. If you want to talk about the poisoning of desire, it really feels like. And I think you get a little bit of this through Elodie, like talking to the idea of her husband and some of these letters to Violet.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Where it's basically just like I need. Needed to get laid by you so bad and you would not do it. And it kind of made me lose it a little bit.

[Craig]

Sure. Okay.

[Andrew]

Because I needed to like redirect all this energy to this other couple. And they were, like. They were playing with my desire, and they were not. I don't know, they were not taking it seriously. Like, it's. It's not like the ambassador and Violet are like, hey, Elodie, you seem really sexually frustrated. Come be our third or something. It's just like, this is. This is a frustrated woman who lives in this town, and they sort of play with her emotions and lead her on and make her do things because they know that she is desperate enough for one or both of them to kind of do it, to follow through with it. Like that scene I described earlier. And maybe I did a good job and maybe I didn't. Of Elodie going to Violet's house after the ambassador has stood her up. Basically.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

And Violet, like, whipping her. This is a thing that, like, Violet directs her to, like, get on the bed and, like, bend over. And this is. This is after she has done all the bad stuff to Elodie. And Elodie is still, like, listen. Listens to Violet and does what she says. Because that is the weird form that her. That her desire has taken is just like, I'm gonna keep digging down into this in the hopes of hitting something satisfying eventually. And, like, maybe if my husband would respond to my body when I climbed on top of him in the mornings instead of ignoring me and then impregnating the grocer's wife.

[Craig]

Maybe.

[Andrew]

That revelation comes at the end where Violet is. There's this whole run that she goes on where Elodie is this woman who, like, everybody talks to, but, like, nobody, but she doesn't listen to anybody or, you know, she's whipping Elodie here. Three blows, she said, counting them on her fingers. One for each of us. Me, you, and him. Him being the ambassador. Three blows for the woman who watches everything and sees nothing. So there's this. This attempt to. To set Elodie up as this person who, like, has. Has all of this information, who is told all of these secrets by everybody, but who doesn't. Like. Like, can't put two and two together. Like, she doesn't. She doesn't know what Violet and the Ambassador are doing. She doesn't know that her husband and the. And the grocer's wife have been getting it on.

[Craig]

Yep, sure. And she. And she doesn't have access to anybody's inner lives, even if she is, like, observing them or traffic in gossip about them or trying to. Like, trying to know about them. Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

Like, she. She wants Stuff, but she's also, like, super passive.

[Craig]

Okay. Yeah.

[Andrew]

I don't know. And it's, you know, it's. It's 1951, and she's a woman, so, like, there's some passivity that is expected of her and, like, imposing her.

[Craig]

Yeah, for sure.

[Andrew]

But also the. The. The, like, the timeline and the sense of place in this book are, like, vague enough that you can't.

[Craig]

I don't know, it's hard to scribe that to it.

[Andrew]

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard to be like, oh, well, this is. This is why she's. She's passive. This is why she's frustrated. Because this was a time when women would have been very frustrated because they would have been expected to subjugate, like, even more of their desires than they'd have to subjugate now.

[Craig]

Can I toss a quote at you about that fuzziness a little bit?

[Andrew]

You can try.

[Craig]

Okay. This is from a review of her prior book, the Blue Ticket, or Blue Ticket, I guess it is like the water cure. Blue Ticket is not a book that offers easy answers. It does not explain how the world ended up this way or even where in the world exactly the story takes place. This lack of concrete information is far from frustrating, but rather essential to the narrative effect. Something allegorical and dreamlike. A story that doesn't so much declare things about our outside world as reveal intimately the main character's interior one. It seems to me that the. I don't even know that you have an opinion on the kind of opaqueness of. Of setting, other than that it might just be a little hard to get handholds in. Did you find that that was like. As you're reading it, you're like, dang, I wish I knew more about when this was set, what the town is, or is it, like, doing enough along the way? And there were other things that were kind of hard for you to pin down.

[Andrew]

Well, let me. This. This is a good opportunity. Okay, let's.

[Craig]

Let's play. Review Tennis. Welcome to our new segment. Review Tennis.

[Andrew]

One of the three star Goodreads review that I. That I read that sort of resonated with my. With my vibe. This is from Arie. Ari.

[Craig]

Ari, Goodreads welcome.

[Andrew]

3.5 rounded down says Ari McIntosh is taking tremendous risks with this and fully commits to describing the extremes of human desire, obsession, madness, and cruelty, creating a suffocatingly. Coffee. Claustrophobic atmosphere. And this is the Black Swan kind of thing. I was. Suffocatingly claustrophobic atmosphere. But the payoff here is underwhelming. And the ellipticalness and archness of the narrative, the non linear time structure and the ornate lushness of the prose all combine to turn this into an exercise in style for its own sake. This was enjoyable on a page to page level, but oddly unsatisfying as a full course meal. I think that is kind of what I am struggling with a little bit, is I've been sitting with this book for like a day and like, I've read a few other, you know, people talking about it and thinking about it, and it's still just kind of like a bunch of, like a bunch of narrative that happened in my. In my brain a little bit. Like, and that's not even to say that I disliked it. It's just to say that it is a work that is vague enough and floaty enough and like vibes based enough that is hard for me to sit down care and come to my book podcast where I have to tell other people about a book for 45 minutes to like, sum up easily what, like, what hit, what didn't did. I did I have a thought about what she was trying to do here? Like, I feel like she was successful. It's just. And it's not even that I disliked it. It's just like, I don't know, like, I guess you should go read it because you have to like, come in this water with me to understand what it's like to be in here.

[Craig]

I think that's okay. Like, I think that that is the. It's. I feel very fortunate now that like, I've been swimming in a lot of lynch stuff because that is the exact. I cannot describe to you why I like a lot of his work other than the fact that while I am watching it, I am perpetually wondering what the heck I'm watching.

[Andrew]

Yeah.

[Craig]

And it is. That is not a feeling I get from a lot of other stories and other storytelling. And it is not the thing that excites me about a lot of other stuff. So when I'm in it, in a work that is working for me, it is like really compelling. And there's this mix of feeling where I'm like kind of pumping my fist in the air going, I don't know what's happening. And like, it is simultaneously, it could break bad at any moment and I will get turned off. Or if it keeps going in the direction that it's going, I'm gonna be on board. I found another goodread review from Kimmy C. Can you see not to be confused with Kimmy B. Kimmy C. I found this to be a bit like reading someone's dream. By the end, you're never quite sure what happened or not. With interpretations and memories all hazing in and out. Still an enlightening take on a historical event as seen by those who lived. Does seem like this book is a little less interested in the historical event part. Other than that, it's. It is the jumping off point for a book that she wanted to write.

[Andrew]

There is one. There's one. There's one thread in here that's like, let's talk. Let's talk about the bread thing.

[Craig]

Okay, well, real quick, I want to share one more.

[Andrew]

Good. Sorry.

[Craig]

Go ahead.

[Andrew]

All right.

[Craig]

David says in 1951, the town of Pont Saint Esprit in southeast France suffered a large scale poisoning, almost certainly the result of bread contaminated with a natural form of LSD. And that tragic circumstance inspired Sophie McIntosh to write this. Okay, David, I don't know who you are. Come on the show.

[Andrew]

That's. I mean, I can just. I can just be David in this, in this, in this moment. But so, okay, about. About how it approaches the. The bread madness.

[Craig]

Yeah, please.

[Andrew]

Is in. In one. Okay. She's trying it. She's kind of trying to have it two different ways in here, I think, and maybe, like the two things play into each other and maybe reality is malleable and one of these things happened and one of them didn't, or you get to make up your mind about what it is. I don't know. The narrator's unreliable, as we've discussed.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

The Ambassador brings to Elodie's husband, the baker man, a little vial of something. And he just says, she finds it in his shirt as she is washing it. And she was kind. I think she's kind of hoping to find evidence that he is cheating on her because I don't know, that would mean that he had desire for somebody and that would.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Make. Make her feel something like that.

[Craig]

Like the Alan Rickman storyline in love, actually. Exactly. Yeah, sure. Just trying to make the book relatable to our audience.

[Andrew]

Yes. And she presents this to him and he says, oh, it's the additive, the one they use in America. The Ambassador sourced it for me. And then it goes away for a while. No, we don't talk about the additive, except the Ambassador is giving something to Violet sometimes, and then Elodie gives it to Violet. But then, as with the crushed glass tart, nothing comes of it when Elodie gives Violet the stuff.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

And then at the End of the. Right at the end, it comes back around and yeah, I guess he did use the additive in the bread on the day when everybody went nuts.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But she never told the authorities about it and they kind of closed the, the case and were like, yeah, it just seems like infected rye or whatever. Like the official explanation is the one that the cops walk away with.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

But she's like, oh, I think it was this additive to the ambassador bra. And nobody, nobody knows who the ambassador was. And some other people remember him but don't. Like, we can't find a record of an ambassador staying in the town at this time.

[Craig]

Ooh.

[Andrew]

So it's like a weird loose thread mystery that kind of exists just to be mysterious, I think. But then also. Okay, so on the one hand, bread madness was caused by this additive, the one they use in America.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

That the mysterious ambassador sourced for the baker.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

But then also at other times in town, like in the run up to this. And part of what creates the creepy, tense atmosphere that I spoke about. Yeah, it's just like some other weird like Wicker man town stuff happens.

[Craig]

Pumping the air. Yes.

[Andrew]

Huh. Wicker man, where there's like a, there's like a festival that they're, that they're at and there's this weird ritual where there's like this little fire that everybody like jumps over and it's part of some weird courting ritual that all the young people do. And you jump over the fire to prove that you, you're strong or something.

[Craig]

Well, yeah, because you can keep your genitals above the fire. Like that's how it works. Like.

[Andrew]

Yeah, right. If you can keep, if you can keep them out of the fire, then it means you can use them.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

Man, the French, they know how to do it over there. And then one like 15 year old lad decides he jumps over. I don't even. He like runs past the jumping fire and runs toward like the big, big bonfire and just like jumps into it. Ah, jumps into the middle of it.

[Craig]

No.

[Andrew]

And then there's this other scene where all the, like the washers circle women are washing all of Violet's clothes and kind of gossiping about her behind her back because she's not there. And then they all like start putting on her clothes and it becomes like this weird like secret history back in Alia sort of thing where they're all just putting on her clothes and like dancing around and kind of going nuts. And then they all come to their senses and take her clothes off and then it's Never really, like, mentioned again. So. And there's a thing where, I don't know, people go out for drinks with the ambassador at the bar, and they are, like, becoming. You know, you could tell they're becoming strange, and it's like, well, why are they becoming strange? And what way are they becoming strange? It's just this whole. This whole thing where something is. Something is building up in this town that nobody ever, like, thinks about or talks about this.

[Craig]

Okay, you've.

[Andrew]

But. But also, the bread incident was caused by the. The additive, the one they use in America.

[Craig]

Sure. Yes.

[Andrew]

There's a clear cause and effect between the bread madness and the additive, the one they use in America.

[Craig]

What you've. The couple of little nuggets you've described to me that coupled with Elodie as this, the unreliable narrator, with, you know. You know, an unquenched or un. Like, she's unsatiated. She's not satisfied. She never be satisfied. That. That, to me, speaks to where this book might get, like, critical acclaim. Like, I was kind of wondering, like, what in this book may have worked for people since we've been in, like, a spot of, like, what is this book actually doing?

[Andrew]

What is it doing? And then, you know. You know, so. So for everything you described, it's like, oh, yeah, okay, I'm standing up. I'm jumping up and down. I don't know what's going on, but it's, like, exciting to be here.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andrew]

Experiencing it. Then there's this other bit where in one of the sections, that's a letter to Violet. She is just like Elodie. After all this has happened, she's living on her own somewhere. It almost. It doesn't matter where. And I think this is part of what I was talking about where it's like this voice is so unmoored in space and time that she could be in Brooklyn or something. She's on Girls Brooklyn now. Yeah. Where she has dyed her hair dark, like Violet's hair, and she's kind of dressing like Violet. And she usually gives Violet's name when she's out and about trying to get ladies. And it's just like, what? What?

[Craig]

Yes.

[Andrew]

Like, okay, I guess. I guess to your point about curdled desire. Like, yes, that desire is still here, and it's still manifesting in weird, unhealthy sort of ways. But it's also like, I thought this was gonna be about this French bread poisoning. Like, what am I reading about?

[Craig]

I have some quotes from a Guardian review that was pretty positive and Put it in context with her other work. Let me pull up the author so that it is by Guardian. Always puts the bylines over off on the side. Joe Hamya, make sure you don't read.

[Andrew]

The part at the bottom about how they're standing up to Trump.

[Craig]

I won't. I won't read that part.

[Andrew]

And how they would really like your. Your money. That part of the article.

[Craig]

This article is more than 2 years old. Thanks for telling me.

[Andrew]

I actually like that the Guardian does that. There's a lot of stuff about the Guardian that I've come to respect as we've use them more and more for interviews and stuff.

[Craig]

If you're reading the Guardian, if you're looking at the Guardian for reviews, you do have to be careful because like for some works just user written reviews will like Google populate at the same frequency as paid professional reviews. And you just got to be a little careful about what you're like what you're looking for. We use user reviews all the time. But just like if you're looking for the Guardians take, that is not always what you're getting. You're getting right? You know, Princess Peach 56's take. But this is by Joe Haimia and she says three books in. We can begin to say that there are traits in Sophie Mackintosh's novels which are particularly Macintosh Ian. The image of a woman with a man's hand around her throat. The attendant sexual violence. That image suggests a veil thrown over questions of time and location that lends both prose and plot a gauzy fever dream quality. That gauzy quality is likewise aided by a set of strict rules established for each story world. And momentum in Macintosh's novels is usually the result of those structures dissolving. That last part doesn't quite seem like anything you've talked about. It does seem to apply more specifically to the worlds of like the. The fully fabricated worlds of the Water Cure and Blue Ticket.

[Andrew]

I know. I think there's an element of that because you do have to have a baseline established kind of toward the beginning of the book where Elodie is this. She's this woman, okay. She has a super relatable like sex drive that is being ignored by her husband who is not like really explaining why he's doing any of the stuff that he's doing. She's in this like washerwoman circle. Like it establishes some things about the community, about like some of her relationships. And then the strange woman comes to town. And it begins as a, I guess a fairly straightforward like crush or just, like, interest, and then it spirals outward from there. And the. The parts that take place in the, like, the present.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

And the parts that take place after the fact kind of complement each other because the, you know, once you find out new facts from either perspective, then you can go back and kind of establish. Examine them from another perspective. There were a couple in the lettered passage or in, you know, the contemporary passage. It's so. Yeah, it's. It does descend for sure.

[Craig]

Okay, cool. Okay, great.

[Andrew]

It's just, you know, the. The event that it feels like is being descended to gets jammed into one chapter at the end. You're not even. You're not even really there, like, witnessing it. You're just having it described to you by somebody who again, has told you like, half a dozen times that her, like, perspective is not to be trusted.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Andrew]

Her recollection of events is not to be trusted.

[Craig]

And then this is the closing graph of that review. In Macintosh's previous novels, I've sometimes wondered to what end such violence truly works. At their heart, her books are concerned with the politics of gender, the suffering those structures induce. But their male characters are too thinly and unforgivingly painted. There is no easy point of access for men to understand the women tortured, while for female readers, the imaginative framework of the Water cure Blue Ticket seldom extends beyond blunt force trauma. Few of us need reminding of all the ways it is terrible to be a woman in the world. Cursed Bread presents a subtler rendering, excuse me, of how enough desperation behind the words I want can make one ill and is all the more gripping for it. What would ever be enough? Elodie despairs midway through. Perhaps my desire is always going to turn on me, snap at my hand even when I fed it, twist it into new and unruly shapes. In attending to these shapes, Macintosh has entered a brilliant new stage of writing. So I just appreciated someone who was like, I've read all the books. I can talk about all three of them. And I can put this one in context of, like, here's what she's been doing and here is like a, you know, the next step of that.

[Andrew]

Here's how it is a continuation of her body of work, and here's how it's extending beyond what she's done before. Yeah, and it's. I don't want my struggle to describe the book to come off as. Cause sometimes I don't know when I. When I really don't like a book, I feel like I don't struggle to.

[Craig]

You lean in on it. You lean in on it. Yeah. You come actually ready with quotes.

[Andrew]

Yeah. And I think there's some similar. Like I. I am doing some similar things that I do when I have a bad, like a bad time reading a book, including like re. Emphasizing some things over and over again and just like getting myself into a little frustrated cul de sacs. I like, I mostly enjoyed this book.

[Craig]

Sure.

[Andrew]

As, you know, as a reading experience, it's just like as a. As a talking experience, I'm finding it more difficult to break into. But it's. It is as, you know, it's as advertised. Like the elements that. That made me interested in reading it for the show are in here where it's, you know, it's. It. There's a little bit that's about this just weird historical event that will take you down a Wikipedia hole for a couple of pages.

[Craig]

Yep. Yep.

[Andrew]

And then also it's kind of unsettling and spooky and there are things going on with the, with the protagonist that's that. That makes you think a little bit. And. Yeah, it's all, it's all in here. I enjoyed it. It's just like difficult and it's trying to be difficult, which makes it more difficult. You know what I mean?

[Craig]

I know there's. There's certainly a thing we've talked about on previous episodes. Like, I think it's around the halfway or sometimes two thirds part of a book for that you and I are reading for the show and you're like, okay, I'm coming. I can. I'm hoping I can see where this book is going because I'm starting to have some thoughts or I'm starting to get worried that I don't know what my thoughts are gonna be. And you're like, well, we've talked about when we're gonna episode and I need to have the book, you know, read in time and. And what am I going to say when we get there? And then that can, that can start to shape your reading experience. We. We try to avoid that. It's also, I think, why we have tried to step up our game on bringing in other review voices and things like that.

[Andrew]

Yeah, I think you'll. You notice it happening, especially in a book where we're having trouble getting a, like getting our hands around what our own take is. Yeah, I'm just gonna bring a bunch of other takes to this and like my. I can. I can form mine in relation to those and it makes it a little bit easier.

[Craig]

So is there like a reality show like Love island that you think that this book like really fits. Like, is this like a good like cooking reality show book, like Chopped or something?

[Andrew]

I would just be. I would be curious to watch what somebody could do with either a reality show or like a fake. Like a show about a reality show where it does just kind of descend into. To madness and. Oh, and you. And you know, I mean, maybe I'm just describing like what watching a Nathan Fielder show is like. But it's. But like what the rules are become less and less clear as you go and then what few expectations you do have the show like zeros in on and then subverts on purpose.

[Craig]

Yeah, because. What was that?

[Andrew]

Yeah, I am just. I am just watching. I.

[Craig]

You're just talking about the rehearsal.

[Andrew]

So I'm asking for Nathan Fielder to do a like a love. A love based. Like a romance based reality show.

[Craig]

There was that show that was basically the Bachelorette but a narrative drama. Oh, what was it called? I'm never going to remember the name of it. Maybe Art. Maybe Andrew can Google real quick and find it.

[Andrew]

What am I. What are the terms?

[Craig]

You're a better Googler than me. It was. It was a TV show that was about a production of A Bachelor alike from.

[Andrew]

Oh, like the. The one that was. And every. There was just like a lot of drama on it.

[Craig]

Yes, yes. What was that show called? It was good. I liked it. But that was much. That was not surreal. It was more just about how, you know, conniving all the producers were.

[Andrew]

Unreal.

[Craig]

Unreal. Yes. That was much more just about the like, you know, machinations of the producers. It was not, you know, Nathan Fielder planting full potato like potatoes in the ground with stickers on them and then pulling them out and putting them in his kitchen. In a show that you don't know what is real or not. I'm excited to watch season two of the rehearsal. I hear it's very strange.

[Andrew]

Yeah, but.

[Craig]

Well, thanks for reading this book, Andrew. I'm glad that you didn't make me any bread for this episode. I'm very. I didn't.

[Andrew]

I didn't want to. I think I would have taken it.

[Craig]

But I wouldn't have eaten it.

[Andrew]

Unlike the. The beard on bread episode that we did. I felt. I didn't feel like I wanted to bring stuff that I had baked to this.

[Craig]

Okay. That's wise. Sure. Thank you.

[Andrew]

I could just. I'm. I am going to show up now to your house with a loaf of bread. I'm gonna. Hey, hey, Craig. This. This bread I used. I used the additive, the one they use in America and it makes, it makes the bread really good.

[Craig]

Problem is, I've eaten a lot of things you've baked and I've never once thought that snakes were coming out of my belly.

[Andrew]

I've never used the additive, the one.

[Craig]

I've seen it on your shelf. I didn't know what it was. But I mean, it does say the.

[Andrew]

Additive one using America on it.

[Craig]

Yeah. Okay. If you, the listener at home, have top shelf bread recipes that you want to share with us, particularly ones that use the additive, the one they use in America, send them to us overdue podmail.com we would love to make them as long as they don't, you know, cause us to jump into the fire like that man did. I don't want to do that.

[Andrew]

We don't know what caused that young man to jump into the fire because the bread thing had happened yet.

[Craig]

Okay, fair enough. Also send us your Sophie Macintosh takes social media at Overdue Pod, Blue sky and Instagram. Our theme music is composed by Nick Laurengis. Andrew if folks want to know more about the show, where do they go?

[Andrew]

Overdue Podcast.com is our Internet website. Up there we have links to the books that we have read and the ones we are going to read. Craig, I think our June. Tell me our June schedule is set at this point. I think I remember doing that.

[Craig]

It's pretty close. There's at least one. There's a collaboration that we're trying to make happen that I don't want to.

[Andrew]

Oh yes.

[Craig]

I don't want to say out loud, lest I.

[Andrew]

We'll just talk about the one we're going to do next week.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Before we do that. Patreon.com overduepod is how you support the show financially, directly. Get access to our Discord community where we talk about the books before we record them.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

That's how your takes can influence our takes as, as you've heard on this episode a couple of times. And yeah, bonus episodes early. We're going to be watching the 1995 Babysitter's Club movie for the finale of Sit Me Baby one more time.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Andrew]

And then starting our Silmarillion read through pretty soon after that. And then also our newsletter which goes out the first Monday of every month.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Andrew]

Dusty bookshelves.

[Craig]

That's what it's called.

[Andrew]

Patreon.com overdupod to get all of that stuff.

[Craig]

Next week I'm reading Gilead by Marilyn Robinson. Excited to dig into that. And I can share that. After that, we're going to be covering James by Percival Everett.

[Andrew]

James.

[Craig]

James. So no bread as the titular or focal point of either novel? I don't think little goes a long.

[Andrew]

Way, especially when it has the additive, the one they use in America in it. All right, everybody, until we talk to you next time, please try to be happy. That was a headgum podcast.

[Craig]

McCrispy strips are now at McDonald's. Tender, juicy and its own sauce. Would you look at that? Well, you can see it, but trust me, it looks delicious. New MC Crispy Strips now at McDonald's.