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review October 2026

The poisonous sisterhood of early 20th-century Hungary

Review by Sara Turnbull
Black-and-white photo of a lone figure in dark clothing bent over crops in a vast tilled field, with distant farmhouses on a flat horizon.
In The Women Are Not Fine (Brazen Books, 2025), Hope Reese transports readers to early-20th-century Hungary, to the rural village of Nagyrév, where a network of abused women used arsenic-laced flypaper to poison their husbands. Sara Turnbull writes that the book serves as a haunting reminder of what happens when the state, the church and the law abandon the women who need them most.
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