Life Cycle of a Moth: dysfunction deep in the woods

Rowe Irvin’s first novel, Life Cycle of a Moth, begins with a harrowing act of violence, seen from the point of view of a fox. Sixteen years later, it is a stranger with fox-red hair, Wyn, who comes traipsing unwittingly into the woodland refuge of Maya and her unnamed child, away from “rotten” humankind.

But their hideaway is no Eden. In the miry, smothering world that Irvin carefully creates, everything – from hunter-gathering to simply walking in the forest – is undercut by a sense of carnality. Even Maya’s plaited hair is a “thrumming thing of blood and sinew”.

Rituals meant to ward off harm – braiding the fence around their land with human hair, beaks and toenail trimmings – colour the daughter’s narration with horror. Her mother’s coddling is also sinister; though the girl is nearly an adult, Maya sucks on her daughter’s thumb as she sleeps. And her “lessons”, used to shut down her daughter’s curiosity, become increasingly grisly.

The arrival of an outsider would seem a straightforward way to unravel the dark cocoon that Maya has spun and enlighten the daughter to the goodness of humanity, but Irvin chooses to keep the morality muddied. The cleverness in this work lies in the way it inducts us into the weirdness of the mother and daughter’s world, revealing how even as their behaviour strays far from the norm, it has, under the surface, its own persuasive logic.

Disentangling the ways in which we use language is also crucial in Irvin’s book. To the 16-year-old, preserved in a state of infantilisation, words such as “Woman. Mother. Boy” are “sounds like uncracked nuts”. Her uninhibited, guttural voice carries this magical realist folk fairytale, with a little of Max Porter in Irvin’s playful, primal prose. The story slackens towards the end, losing some of its twisted propulsion when Wyn’s part of the narrative is tied up too neatly, but Life Cycle of a Moth is a masterful, murky and fierce debut.

Life Cycle of a Moth by Rowe Irvin is published by Canongate. Order from observershop.co.uk to receive a 10% discount offer. Delivery charges may apply

Photograph by Valeriano Antonini/Getty Images