Life Cycle of a Moth
Rowe Irvin
Available as Hardback, eBook, Downloadable audio
A visceral, bold and devastating debut novel exploring male violence and maternal love, and what it means to create a space of refuge
AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT OF 2025
‘Astonishing’ LUCY ROSE
‘Biting and rich’ MOLLY AITKEN
‘Unforgettable’ OBSERVER
‘A novel of rare power’ GABRIELLE GRIFFITHS
An itchy feeling.
A wrinkle in the forest.
A cracking twig.
A coming sound.
Myma, do you hear it?
Myma, do you hear?
Myma?
Maya and Daughter live in complete isolation in a secluded woodland, their days aligned with the light and changing seasons, a complex pattern of routine and ritual. Daughter has never questioned the life her mother has chosen for them; the life that has meant she’s never met another soul, or known anywhere except their forest home.
But one day, when Daughter is almost sixteen, a red-haired stranger steps into the confines of their territory. Where there was always two, suddenly there are three – and the carefully constructed world that Maya has built to keep her daughter safe may not survive it.
Urgent, haunting and thrillingly alive, Life Cycle of a Moth explores both the tenderness and ferocity of maternal love, asking what we might find ourselves capable of – and willing to sacrifice – in order to shelter those we hold dear.
“Unforgettable … Wonderfully linguistically playful … A book that expertly balances light and dark, childish play and the most adult of terrors … [Irvin’s] uninhibited, guttural voice carries this magical realist folk fairy-tale, with a little of Max Porter in Irvin’s playful, primal prose … A masterful, murky and fierce debut”
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“Tender [and] captivating … In impish yet tender style, Irvin thoughtfully explores what it means for a mother to care for a daughter in a world where male violence is everywhere. Life Cycle of a Moth is the very best kind of fiction: with the book open, you feel utterly transported; once you close it, you see how cunningly it holds a mirror up to reality. I can’t wait to read whatever Irvin writes next”
Ellen Peirson-hagger
guardian
“A beautiful debut. It’s rare that a novel feels so much like a little world to escape into, albeit at times a very bleak one, but everything here was so thoroughly and tenderly well-realised, the sense of ceremony and indoctrination, the details of nature. An allegory about the fragile times we live in and the terrible challenges of protecting our way of life and the creatures we love”
Sara Baume
“With unsparing, imaginative intensity, Rowe Irvin has hewn out of the bedrock of a harsh, non-Latinate lexicon a ferocious drama of damage and isolation, of a mother’s ruthless passion and domination of her daughter. Life Cycle of a Moth occupies mythic territory (think Ted Hughes, Jim Crace, Alan Garner) and fills it with rough, poignant tenderness”
Marina Warner
“Muscular, moving and muddy, Life Cycle of a Moth is an unflinching woodland fable you cannot miss. It’s astonishing and stirring; a debut novel tenderly cadenced and alchemical, and I’m still reeling from turning its final pages. Rowe Irvin is a born storyteller”
Lucy Rose, Author Of The Lamb
Rowe Irvin
Rowe Irvin is a writer and artist living between London and Manchester. Her work has appeared in Prototype 5, Unquiet Slumbers: A Collection of Folk Horror Tales (Nepenthé Press) and the Stinging Fly. She was awarded second prize in the 2024 Seán Ó Faoláin International Short Story Competition, and has been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and the Bath Short Story Award. She is currently completing a PhD in Creative Writing, with a focus on oral tradition and folk tales, at the University of Manchester. Life Cycle of a Moth is her first novel.
@bog__daughter