A sensual, darkly funny debut novel about a young woman in 18th century Provence who joins the nunnery in an attempt to reform her family’s reputation, only to discover how secrets and desire swirl in even the most unexpected of places, for fans of Lauren Groff's Matrix if it were written by Ottessa Moshfegh.

During the suffocating heat wave of 1778, Louise-Hélène arrives at L’Abbaye Sainte-Claire de la Lumière with one fragile hope: that becoming a nun will redeem her family from the scandal that has ruined their good name. Unattractive, naïve, and already a disappointment to all who knew her, Louise embraces a life of obedience, poverty, and silence as a way to finally be useful—to finally be good.

But beneath the abbey’s rituals of prayer and penance, something feral stirs. As the local village’s harvest festival approaches, the boundaries between sanctity and sin begin to break. Among sharp-tongued sisters, a quietly manipulative priest, and a mentor whose casual rebellion unsettles Louise-Hélène’s rigid faith, her longing to prove her virtue begins to twist into something far more dangerous.

Darkly comic, brazen, and unexpectedly tender, Weak Flesh is a visceral historical debut about faith, female repression, and the bloody, humiliating extremes a young woman will go to for absolution.