Beta Vulgaris: A Novel

by Margie Sarsfield

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

Millennial malaise and engrossing eco-horror are at the heart of this Minnesota beet farm. This uncanny tale is perfect for fans of Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder and The Vegetarian by Han Kang.

One of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2025
One of The Millions' Most Anticipated Books of Winter 2025

A young woman’s seasonal job working a sugar beet harvest takes a surreal turn in this surprising and vivid debut.

Elise and her boyfriend, Tom, set off for Minnesota, hoping the paycheck from the sugar beet harvest will cover the rent on their Brooklyn apartment. Amidst the grueling work and familiar anxieties about her finances, Elise starts noticing strange things: threatening phone calls, a mysterious rash, and snatches of an ominous voice coming from the beet pile.

When Tom and other coworkers begin to vanish, Elise is left alone to confront the weight of her past, the horrors of her uncertain future, and the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets. Biting, eerie, and confidently told, Beta Vulgaris harnesses a distinct voice and audacious premise to undermine straightforward narratives of class, trauma, consumption, and redemption.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324078739
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/11/2025
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Margie Sarsfield was the recipient of the 2019 Calvino Prize. She earned her MFA from Ohio State University. Her work has appeared in Salt Hill, CutBank, the Normal School, Seneca Review, Hippocampus, and elsewhere. She lives in Reno, Nevada.

Editorial Reviews

"[An] ambitious, impressive debut… [Elise's] depth and honesty give this story a lot of power."— Gabino Iglesias New York Times

"I’m trying to create a niche for myself as the preeminent weird-girl-book guy. To cement my legacy, I’m recommending Beta Vulgaris, a very weird book that I’m very excited for! When a young woman and her boyfriend start working a seasonal job at a sugar beet farm, she wants to make enough money to pay her rent for a few months. What she gets is a string of mysterious disappearances and a pile of beets that seems to be talking to her. Thank you Margie Sarsfield for your contribution to the “vegetable gothic” canon."— McKayla Coyle Literary Hub

"Named for the humble beet plant and meaning, in a rough translation from the Latin, “vulgar second,” Sarsfield’s surreal debut finds a seasonal harvest worker watching her boyfriend and other colleagues vanish amid “the menacing but enticing siren song of the beets.”"— John H. Maher The Millions

"Whispering beets and inner surrealism illuminate a haunting exploration of agricultural exploitation, eating disorders, and the terrifying fulfillment of desire."— Meghan Racklin Bomb Magazine

"Beta Vulgaris is disturbing [and] beautiful in its insistence on that old saw, “Nothing human is alien.” Sarsfield gives us privileged access to a heart that is hurting."— Chris Hewitt Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A promising and well-written quasi-speculative story."— Kirkus Reviews

"Beta Vulgaris announces the arrival of a singular talent: Margie Sarsfield's debut novel will burrow into your very soul. I couldn't put it down."— Nick White, author of How To Survive a Summer

"Uncanny and electric and quietly harrowing. . . . Margie Sarsfield dazzles us and challenges us, delivering a novel so vivid and memorable, I’ll be thinking of beet pilers for years to come."— Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution

"Sharp and atmospheric eco-horror that slices into the gruesome strangeness of industrialized agriculture. With Maggie Sarsfield’s compelling cast and heady, urgent prose, Beta Vulgaris is a fever dream hungry to consume you."— Kathryn Harlan, author of Fruiting Bodies

"[An] ambitious and delightfully bizarre debut…This is a knockout."— Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher

2025-01-18
In this debut novel, a young Brooklyn couple become seasonal sugar beet harvesters in Minnesota to earn some serious scratch.

Recent college graduate Elise is in debt—she can’t even afford her antidepressants—although she doesn’t tell her boyfriend, Tom, nor does he know about her longtime eating disorder. Elise is grateful for the opportunity to make good money with Salt of the Earth Sugar, plus she sees harvest work as “a real life experience. Something they could say they’d done when they got back to Brooklyn, where hardscrabble Steinbeckian authenticity was social currency.” At the campground where she and Tom park their camper, Elise meets “hot and cool” queer girl Cee, another seasonal worker; develops a crush on her; and fears that Tom has done the same. (Elise’s preoccupation with being cool can be amusing and is presumably intended to play as merely juvenile rather than mockable.) One day, at a nearby church that offers harvesters free meals, Elise sees a sign that reads “The beets can only hurt you if you LISTEN to them!!!!,” and before long she’s hearing a voice in her head that says “Return the dirt.” Sarsfield’s writing is sturdy throughout, and the farm setting and duties are vividly rendered, but the novel doesn’t seem to know where to go with its surreal turns, which come to include the disappearance of harvest workers. Elise’s self-pity can be tiresome, and her self-destructive tendencies, which include erratic spending, can be wearying, but readers won’t draw any conclusions about Elise that she hasn’t already drawn; she thinks of herself as, quite perfectly, “an expert in egomaniacal self-hatred, the dark art of inventing new and spectacular ways to feel bad.”

A promising and well-written quasi-speculative story runs aground under the weight of its protagonist’s self-absorption.

Kirkus Reviews