The Colour of Milk: A Novel

A “truly wonderful” exploration of power dynamics between servant and employer is a “slender, beautiful novel with as much heart as a book twice its size.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“this is my book and i am writing it by my own hand.”

Mary and her three sisters rise every day to farmwork that threatens to suppress their own awakening desires, whether it’s Violet’s pull toward womanhood or Beatrice’s affinity for the Scriptures. But it’s their abusive father who stands to deliver the most harm. Only Mary dares to stand up to him. When he sends her to work for the local vicar and his invalid wife, he deals her the only blow she may not survive.

Within walking distance of her family farm, the vicarage is a world away, a curious, unsettling place. Teeming with the sexuality of the vicar’s young son and the manipulations of another servant, it is also a place of books and learning–a source of endless joy. Yet as Mary soon discovers, such precious knowledge comes at a devastating price.

“The unflinching, observant, and thoroughly persuasive voice of the narrator, a shrewd, illiterate farm girl, makes this slim novel striking.” —The Atlantic

“Compelling . . . [A] literary jewel crafted by an accomplished writer.” —Booklist

“At once lyric and brutal.” —Library Journal

“Nell Leyshon has beautifully captured a voice that haunts, long after the last word has been read.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of The Kitchen House

“A devastating story told with great skill and economy.” —Penelope Lively, author of Family Album

“Charming, Brontë-esque, compelling, special and hard to forget.” —Marian Keyes, author of Anybody Out There?

© 2023 Ecco (Ebook): 9780062192073

Release date

Ebook: 21 November 2023