Mrs March
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3.6 • 60 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
‘Nastily good fun’ Metro
SET TO BECOME A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ELIZABETH MOSS
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.
Reviews
‘I read Mrs March in one sitting and was so captured by it … As a character, [Mrs March] is fascinating, complex, and deeply human’ Elisabeth Moss
‘Feito nods deftly to her forebears – there are shades of Hitchcock and Highsmith here … while the opening chapter puts one in mind of Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway … Nastily good fun’ Claire Allfree, Metro
‘Virginia Feito’s noirish debut novel left me rapt, gleefully ambivalent about her eponymous protagonist: did I like her? Did I find her funny? Did I want to hug her? Was I bit a scared of her? Did I relate to her? To all of the above: yes … an elegant, claustrophobic psychological thriller that feels incredibly original’ Evening Standard
‘What a rancid little book, I absolutely loved it’ Alice Slater
‘The atmosphere of queasy foreboding is compelling, as is the portrayal of a flawed, troubled and complex individual trying to keep it together while coming apart at the seams’ Economist
‘A brilliantly tense psychological study from a writer who keeps pace with the grandees she invokes – Du Maurier, for one … Feito has done that most horrible, wonderful and truly novelistic of things: she has seen right through Mrs March and into the shameful, petty, maggoty secrets that everybody carries’ Guardian
'A delicious, disorienting study of suspicion, societal pressure and shifting identities, brilliantly rendered. I swallowed this tale down as greedily as if it were Mrs. March's beloved olive bread' Rachel Edwards, author of Darling
‘Gloriously grotesque: tormented by the desire for glossy magazine perfection; cruelly judgemental; frantic to believe the world revolves around her. And yet Feito makes her guilt-inducingly relatable…The gothic awfulness of her predicament reminds you of Ottessa Moshfegh’s grand guignol creations and lurid descriptive talents; Shirley Jackson’s claustrophobic horror’ The Times
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Societal roles so thoroughly define the titular Upper East Side Manhattan matron of Feito's elegantly written, unflinchingly observed debut—first as the unwanted younger daughter in a frosty upper-crust New York family, now as the fastidious wife of literary sensation George March—that her first name isn't revealed until the final sentence. And Mrs. March's sense of self is sufficiently tenuous that it takes but a throwaway inquiry from the clerk at her favorite patisserie concerning whether the protagonist in George's current bestseller was modeled on her to trigger the initial tremors of an emotional earthquake. The increasingly delusional Mrs. March becomes convinced that her husband may have murdered a young woman in Maine during one of his annual hunting trips, a hypothesis she attempts to investigate. Though the suspense remains high up to the horrific final surprise, much of this woman-pushed-to-the-brink-of-madness story feels familiar, and if not for some contemporary references, Mrs. March's breakdown could be occurring in a Henry James drawing room. One looks forward to Feito training her clearly considerable talents on fresher material next time around.
