"From the first page, I kept thinking – I wish I’d written this."
I’ve rarely read a book that gave me so much writer’s envy as Mrs March. From the first page, I kept thinking – I wish I’d written this. There’s not too much I can say about the plot without spoiling some of the novel’s most surprising pleasures, but I’ll try.
Mrs March, preparing for a party to celebrate her husband’s latest novel, discovers that the main character in the novel, an aging prostitute who nobody wants to sleep with, is based on her. This sets off a chain of speculation and increasingly macabre events that leave the reader wound tight as a spring – and Mrs March begins to suspect that her husband, George, may in fact be a murderer. Or is Mrs March going mad? We are distanced from our highly unreliable narrator until the very last page by never knowing her first name. Yet Virginia Feito simultaneously hews us so closely into her protagonists’ perspective that it becomes an act of horror in itself. The prose is spare, hallucinatory, peppered with razor sharp insight. It’s one of the best evocations I have ever read of anxiety, the inner gallop of panic induced by the prospect of making a decision. Mrs March’s gradual transformation over the course of the book is agonising to witness. And it is deeply, deliciously gothic.
| Primary Genre | Family Drama |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister the Serial Killer in a brilliantly unsettling and darkly funny debut novel full of suspense and paranoia
George March’s latest novel is a smash hit. None could be prouder than Mrs. March, his dutiful wife, who revels in his accolades and relishes the lifestyle and status his success brings.
A creature of routine and decorum, Mrs. March lives an exquisitely controlled existence on the Upper East Side. Every morning begins the same way, with a visit to her favourite patisserie to buy a loaf of
olive bread, but her latest trip proves to be her last when she suffers an indignity from which she may never recover: an assumption by the shopkeeper that the protagonist in George March’s new book –
a pathetic sex worker, more a figure of derision than desire – is based on Mrs. March.
One casual remark robs Mrs. March not only of her beloved olive bread but of the belief that she knew everything about her husband – and herself – sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey, one
that starts within the pages of a book but may very well uncover both a killer and the long-buried secrets of Mrs. March’s past.
A razor-sharp exploration of the fragility of identity and the smothering weight of expectations, Mrs. March heralds the arrival of a wicked and wonderful new voice.
Mrs March features in the following genres: Family Drama, Debuts, Modern and Contemporary Fiction, Gothic, Fiction, Recommendations, General Fiction, Styles (G), Style qualifiers
Mrs March is available in Paperback, Hardback
Mrs March was written by Virginia Feito and published by Fourth Estate Ltd an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Mrs March has 288 pages
£9.89
