Brigid Lowe

A gorgeously dark and magical tale of female revenge inspired by Celtic folklore and wild nature 'A masterpiece... an intricate, otherworldly, complex and dramatic novel that held me spellbound.' Barbara Erskine, Sunday Times Bestselling Author Three figures loom from the gathering dark of Britain's oldest story: a queen risen from slavery, a sorceress of the moon, and flowers imprisoned in woman's form. Their fates are bound together by the cruelty of a magician whose hungers scar the land. The Bloody Branch retells their story from the inside, revealing an epic not of men’s wars and conquests but of women’s pain and ecstasy, birth and transformation — flesh, flower and blood held in animation by the eerie power of the land. Women suffer alone, but fight back together. Brigid Lowe’s dark, sensuous and unsettling debut casts ancient light on desire, sex and our relationship with nature, as these original heroines blossom into fierce new life. 'Rich with passion and relevance for our modern world... Stunning! Anya Bergman, author of The Witches of Vardo ‘A rich, visceral fever dream’ Lucy Holland, author of Sistersong 'I adored everything about The Bloody Branch... this haunting, sensual debut had me holding my breath, firmly under its spell.' Emma van Straaten, author of This Immaculate Body

In this exceptional and joyous memoir, Brigid Lowe swims her way back to life by seeking to plunge into every one of Scotland’s thirty thousand ice-cold lochs.

Three powerful heroines – a queen, a sorceress and woman made of flowers – plot revenge against the villain who wronged them. A gorgeously dark debut novel inspired by Celtic Britain’s first fantasy fiction.Man is cruel, but the flowers will take their revenge.Three great heroines – slave queen Goewin, the reclusive sorceress Arianrhod, and Blodeuwedd, a woman conjured from flowers – unite to avenge themselves on the most dangerous man in ancient legend.Gwydion is a powerful sorcerer, whose ambition and cruelty wreak havoc across the kingdom. When at last the earth itself is put at stake, Goewin, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd each unleash their uncanny powers to challenge him.In this vital and visceral retelling of one of the oldest stories in British literature and precursor of modern fantasy fiction, Brigid Lowe casts ancient light on desire, sex and our relationship with nature to bring Celtic myth to explosive, sensuous, blossoming new life.

This book explores the importance of sympathy as a central idea behind Victorian fiction, and an animating principle of novel reading generally. Sympathy, Brigid Lowe argues, deserves a much more important role as both a subject and a guiding principle for literary criticism.