Welcome to the fifth of my ‘Calendar Chaos’ posts, in which I take the books I received in my 2024 book advent – each cover representing a different period of time – and review them for you!
Up first in March is MARCH and the book is Mrs March by Virginia Feito.
Read on to find out more…
Blurb: 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.
Review: Imagine a dark mixture of Virginia Woolf’s interior monologue novel Mrs Dalloway with the creeping, everyday horror of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and you get a fair idea of what to expect from Mrs March.
We follow the inner thoughts of the titular character, Mrs March, as she descends from high anxiety and acute self-consciousness, through paranoia, mania and hallucinatory episodes, to an eventual full psychotic – and murderous – break with reality.
The novel simultaneously skewers the self-centred fears of the upwardly mobile upper-middle-class society of the near past and perfectly captures the very real horrors of mental illness – caused by a mixture of genetic influence and past trauma – as a person grasps desperately for normality while becoming increasingly unable to recognise it.
In fact, the author blurs the line between fantasy, nightmare and reality so effectively as the story progresses that the reader finds themselves inhabiting the same surreal and dreamlike space of the character, and just as unable to clearly distinguish events from imaginings.
Very clever and very disturbing, this female American Psycho character study of an unstable, damaged mind makes for a very uncomfortable – if suspenseful and compelling read – and leaves you with a lingering chill of anxious paranoia as a parting gift.
About the author:
A native of Spain, Virginia Feito was raised in Madrid and Paris, and studied English and drama at Queen Mary University of London. She lives in Madrid, where she writes her fiction in English.
Website: https://www.virginiafeito.com/
