With its labyrinthine prose, twisting and turning, frequently circling back on itself, Malevolent Fairy creates a web of tangled lies and half truths. Ania is a troubled protagonist who finds herself in a decrepit and crumbling camp for teens. Unable to remember how she got there, Ania is confused and disorientated, always begging to return home to her agoraphobic mother and rebellious, queer sibling.

Her dead nana’s voice is an ever-present and paranoid guide, hindering as often as helping Ania as she tries to navigate the unfamiliar and threatening terrain. The other characters – employees and guests/prisoners of the camp – seem eerily familiar. Is Daria Ania’s sibling or Cynthia her mum? And what about the delivery driver? Could he be her father?

Punctuating Ania’s chapters, we find advertisements for and newspaper articles about a dangerous sector of America’s economy – camps for troubled teens. Below these, are threads of comments – the kind we remind ourselves not to read when navigating the internet – that effectively distil the toxic nature of social media. We eventually learn the identity of one of the commenters, but the voice stalking them remains anonymous and perhaps reflects an amalgamation of conspiracist leftists.

Malevolent Fairy dances between psychological and supernatural horror. Readers are left uncertain as to whether Ania’s trauma is real or imagined. Is she the victim of constant bullying, or has she inherited her nana’s and mother’s paranoia? Is Abigail a friend, enemy or an alternate identity created by Ania’s troubled mind?

BB Clifford leads Ania and the reader down a myriad of blind alleys and dead ends, repeating imagery and scenes to reflect the obsessive, spiralling thoughts of the young protagonist. I admit that the phrase ‘liminal space’ felt like nails on a blackboard by the end of the book, and other recurring motifs like arachnids and missing children seemed overdone.

Interestingly, Malevolent Fairy is the third book in a trilogy about Ania’s dysfunctional family, but it is successful as a standalone novel. The narrative structure is ambitious and, although it flounders at times, it contains a naïve beauty and a powerful thread of universal truth. The antagonist is misogyny – those faceless, powerful men who view girls and women as baby-making machines and playthings. Clifford’s portrayal of the devastating results of such beliefs is a source of horror and discomfort that many female readers will recognise in their own lives.

It may not be perfect but Clifford offers readers something extraordinary, a fresh insight into an old problem.

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