Like a lesbian Walden where everything goes terribly wrong, Mammoth is the latest from the International Booker-shortlisted author of Boulder

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Mammoth’s protagonist is a disenchanted young lesbian. She’s inexperienced, irritated by life, eager to gestate, and determined to strip everything else down to essentials. She seduces men at random, swaps her urban habitat for an isolated farmhouse, befriends a shepherd, nurses lambs, battles stray cats, waits tables, cleans house, and dabbles in sex work - all in pursuit of life in the raw.

This small bomb of a novel, not remotely pastoral, builds to a howling crescendo of social despair, leaving us at the mercy of Eva Baltasar’s wild voice.