Mrs. March
George March's latest novel is a smash. No one could be prouder than his dutiful wife, Mrs. March, who revels in his accolades. A careful creature of routine and decorum, she lives a precariously controlled existence on the Upper East Side until one morning, when the shopkeeper of her favorite patisserie suggests that her husband's latest protagonist--a detestable character named Johanna--is based on Mrs. March herself. Clutching her ostrich leather pocketbook and mint-colored gloves, she flees the shop. What could have merited this humiliation?
That one casual remark robs Mrs. March of the belief that she knew everything about her husband--and herself--thus sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey that begins within the pages of a book. While snooping in George's office, Mrs. March finds a newspaper clipping about a missing woman. Did George have anything to do with her disappearance? He's been going on a lot of "hunting trips" up north with his editor lately, leaving Mrs. March all alone at night with her tormented thoughts, and the cockroaches that have suddenly started to appear, and strange breathing noises . . . As she begins to decode her husband's secrets, her deafening anxiety and fierce determination threaten everyone in her wake--including her stoic housekeeper, Martha, and her unobtrusive son, Jonathan, whom she loves so profoundly, when she remembers to love him at all.
Combining a Hitchcockian sensibility with wickedly dark humor, Virginia Feito, a brilliantly talented and, at times, mischievous newcomer, offers a razor-sharp exploration of the fragility of identity. A mesmerizing novel of psychological suspense and casebook insecurity turned full-blown neurosis, Mrs. March will have you second-guessing your own seemingly familiar reflection in the mirror.Earn by promoting books
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This crisp, delicious portrait of a woman coming apart is a brutal, darkly funny, sharp blade of a book. I loved it.--Amber Sparks, author of And I Do Not Forgive You
Mrs. March is just the Madame Bovary-meets-Patricia Highsmith feminist psychoanalytic comedy-of-manners thriller that I didn't know I so desperately needed. I almost destroyed my life by staying up so late reading. I am lucky my house is still standing.--Elif Batuman, author of The Idiot
Feito locks the reader up inside the fracturing psyche of a woman of privilege ... through excruciatingly precise renderings of grotesque delusions... Feito masterfully orchestrates the bewildering horrors of Mrs. March's breakdown... Feito's bravura gothic thriller brilliantly exposes monstrous consequences of covert neglect and cruelty.--Donna Seaman, Booklist
In a horror-laced psychological drama, the wife of a bestselling New York novelist learns his latest protagonist is modeled on her . . . Abandoning her purchases, [Mrs. March] bolts from the store, never to return, and immediately confronts an advertisement featuring a woman smiling knowingly under the words 'SHE HAD NO IDEA.' Even the billboards know! This is just one of innumerable creepy details that speed Mrs. March's descent into a spiraling vortex of psychosis . . . Feito is Spanish and lives in Madrid, but somehow she is the love child of Patricia Highsmith and Shirley Jackson. On her way to the screen played by Elisabeth Moss, Mrs. March is absolutely right--everyone is talking about her.--Kirkus Reviews, starred review
[An] elegantly written, unflinchingly observed debut.-- "Publishers Weekly"
Mrs. March's flights of fantasy... progress to psychotic episodes and flashbacks to her stoic upbringing; even readers will begin to question what is real and what is imagined.--Edward Goldberg "Library Journal"
