The Writing Retreat

Expecting a cozy retreat the likes of MacDowell or Yaddo, with the residents being slowly and genteelly knocked off? Then look elsewhere. This intimate retreat is the brain child of the renowned feminist horror writer Roza Vallo, who invites a handful of women under 30 to a month at her Victorian mansion in upstate New York. The women are all fierce Roza devotees, especially our narrator, Alex, who’s hoping the experience will help her push past a yearlong writers’ block. No sooner do they all gather for their first dinner than Roza starts revealing her crazy cards: the cohort will have to turn in 12 pages a day; read each other’s work; participate in group workshops; meet regularly with herself, Roza; and complete a novel by the end of the month. Whew! But best of all, at month’s end, a winner will receive a publishing contract for seven figures. This largesse, combined with Roza’s cruel badgering of the participants, ups the anxiety and tension in the group. But if only it stopped there. Slowly the cohort begins to come unhinged, false identities are discovered, one woman disappears in the midst of a horrendous snow storm, and everything the women hold to be true about Roza turns out to be false. This book is one hell of a wild romp.