At the Edge of the Woods

“An accomplished, unsettling debut… At the Edge of the Woods is a novel that invites full immersion on the reader’s part; the reward is a deeply unsettling exploration of what it means to inhabit a female body but to reject femininity, and to feel a connection with the natural world that embodies both awe and terror. In this, its themes could not be more timely.”
—Stephanie Merritt, The Guardian

“Bromwich writes stylishly propulsive prose, creating irresistible momentum in a novel whose plot is tangled and exploratory. By its end, At the Edge of the Woods is a portrait of both a profoundly liberated woman and a woman in danger. It is a knife-sharp, haunting novel, a testament in both its content and its origins to what both imagination and meditation can do.”
—Lily Meyer, AIR MAIL
“Bromwich brings a dash of menace and blurs the line between what is real and unreal, what is imagined and what is there. At the Edge of the Woods is a trip; surreal and compelling, subverting the expectation of narrative, of character and of escaping to the woods. Bromwich’s writing is inspired, with the polished tension of Shirley Jackson, and the prose of Ali Smith or Tove Jansson. She is capable of dazzling beauty amongst a claustrophobic atmosphere.”
—Kelsey Ward, Oban Times
“In this mesmerizing novel, a woman moves to a cabin in the woods, on a mountain at the edge of a town filled with people who regard her with increasing suspicion… Much of the book is concerned with Laura’s immediate experiences of the landscape, which creates a lulling effect, but as in the wilderness, one cannot let themselves become unwary; the beautiful descriptions are soon punctuated by a sharp sense of menace as Laura’s reality begins to deteriorate. This is an unsettling fever dream of a book that I will be thinking about for a long time.”
—Emily Temple, LitHub
“Bromwich’s prose is sedately paced, erudite, and textured in its observations of nature. Laura has a sly sense of humor and a deep distrust of humankind. As her story advances, her relationship to reality shifts and slides… At the Edge of the Woods is wise, ethereal, haunting, filled with both beauty and horror. Brief but thoughtful, lush in its descriptions, this is a novel of introspection.”
—Julia Kastner, Shelf Awareness