Mrs. S
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Oprah Daily・Electric Literature・Gay Times・NBC Out
A JULY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK
A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick
In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of "matron." Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body.
That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster's wife, a woman who is her polar opposite--an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.
Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick's bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.
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K Patrick is a writer based in Glasgow. Their poetry has appeared in Poetry Review and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poetry Prize in 2021, the same year that K was shortlisted for The White Review Fiction Prize for their short story "Eggs". In 2020, they were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. Mrs. S is their debut novel.
★ "Patrick's deft manipulation of narrative time and use of interior monologue to describe the tensions among thought, intention, and action recall the work of Virginia Woolf... The drama of the forbidden affair keeps the reader voraciously turning the pages, but on a deeper level, the novel also offers an incisive and nuanced reflection on self-evolution as the narrator navigates the complexities of gender identity, social power, and the dynamic tension between private and public selves. An erotic yet high-minded literary achievement."--Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"Revelatory... Patrick makes palpable the compromises required by secret love, and though the romance is aching and well crafted, what emerges above all is a fascinating character portrait, that of a woman obscure to the world but radiant inside."--Publishers Weekly
"I was hypnotized by this ecstatic, erotic debut, written, it seems, in such a way as to remove everything possible (exposition, backstory, mundane descriptions, dialogue tags) to get closer to an experience of pure want... It is the first contemporary novel I have read in recent memory that I feel tempted to compare to Virginia Woolf, if only for the elasticity of time and the primacy of internal churn to create drama and dissonance. (But there's rather more sex.)"--Emily Temple, LitHub, "The 28 Novels You Need to Read This Summer"
"A thrillingly evocative debut from a superb young writer...5/5 stars."--Lucy Scholes, Telegraph UK
"The novel's strength lies in the ratcheting up of longing, culminating in passionate sex as the heatwave summer continues... Atmospheric and daring...beautifully written."--Joanna Briscoe, The Guardian
"K Patrick's first novel embraces and then toys with our expectations of the lesbian romance...[the] novel is attentive to gesture...filled with close descriptions of movement."--Josie Mitchell, London Review of Books
"There's nothing else like it out there...it remains exciting to hear such an individual new voice exploring power and desire, giving us an artful insight in other lives and reminding us that all things move toward their end."--John Self, The Times (UK)
"A melancholic yet seductive character study following a young, unnamed Australian woman at an English boarding school...With no mentions of modern technology, the setting takes on a liminal feeling, adding to the feeling of displacement that the protagonist experiences... A powerful and introspective novel that fans of queer literary fiction will savor."--Jennifer Renken, Library Journal
"Mrs. S is a novel in which a different kind of love--self-acceptance--conquers all."--Foreword Reviews
"Gorgeous...Mrs. S consists of mostly short, clipped sentences that still allow for the sumptuousness of a clandestine affair to sneak in, building in suspense of the will-they, won't-they variety."--Maris Kreizman, Vulture, "14 Books We Can't Wait to Read this Summer"
"K Patrick has said of Mrs S that 'I just had this impulse to write a horny lesbian novel'. They have absolutely succeeded at that aim - the granular, finely-worked detailing of longing, fantasising and consummation is wonderfully lascivious."--Leon Craig, The White Review
"Such a delicately detailed fresco of longing that, upon finishing, I felt the incongruous sensation of watching a bird sleep. I can't explain why; I only know I love this book. K Patrick is a writer to whom I now can't help but return."--Zain Khalid, author of Brother Alive
"Mrs. S oozes with erotic tension from the start. It is a story so seductively and intelligently observed that its pulse continues long after the final page. To dismantle a certain queer narrative into something else is rare and thrilling. I haven't read anything quite like it. Yes. I loved it."--Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
"A voluptuous performance in the art of withholding, taut with anticipation through the final line."--Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service
"I loved this book in ways I no longer know how to express in a blurb...K Patrick's watchful measured prose simmers."--Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
"Mrs. S is sublime--at once a languorous slow-burn and a moving reflection on queerness and what it is to be and be seen. I loved this book."--Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
"A beautifully crafted and uncannily accomplished debut."--Rupert Thomson, author of Barcelona Dreaming
"An extraordinary novel: poignant and tough, tender and unsentimental...Deeply warm and generous, optimistic in spite of its clear-eyed realism."--Marina Kemp, author of Nightingale
