Review by Annabel
Virginia Feito’s debut novel, Mrs March, was an absolute blast. An exercise in paranoia on the part of an Upper East Side housewife, who thinks people are talking about her as the model for the not-so-complimentary protagonist of her husband’s new novel – it escalates from there!
After such a strong debut, could she surpass it with her second novel? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes!’ Just look at the cover which reverses Mrs March – a lurid green with red, rather than red with green. Note the nod to Bret Easton Ellis in the title, for the elevator pitch for Victorian Psycho could be ‘Jane Eyre meets Patrick Bateman’ – you’ve never met a governess like Winifred Notty.
Winifred is our gloriously reliable unreliable narrator. I say reliable because she does exactly what she says she’s doing, unreliable because she is unhinged. Feito has her tell her story in a pastiche of Victorian novels chapter titles which explain what will happen within, the first three go like this…
- In Which I Arrive At Ensor House
- In Which I Meet My Employers and Am Not Terribly Impressed.
- In Which I Meet My Charges and Am Not Terribly Impressed.
The action begins three months before Christmas, and before she meets her employers, the Pounds, the housekeeper Mrs Able shows her around:
As I walk inside, the skirt of my dress brushes her limp hand, which she withdraws instantly. Mrs Able, I muse, is a woman who has never held a penis.
This is a typical thought from our narrator, she doesn’t hold back. Everything in her life, well nearly everything, is couched in terms of vitriol and gore, even the landscape while out for a walk with her charges,
Leaves are strewn across the grounds in hues of bile and blood. The brumal skies whip up a fierce wind, carrying the smell of rainfall from further north.
She starts cultivating the housemaid who is sweet on the young gardener. She treats her charges with utter disdain, which they seem to respond to! Things start to get worse though when she gets on the wrong side of Mrs Pounds, who exhibits a cruel streak of her own – she has got through rather a lot of governesses. But Winifred Notty is made of sterner stuff. She has learned the hard way:
Mother first tried to kill me when I was thirteen months old. ‘You learned to walk so fast,’ she told me later. ‘I thought I might as well stop you while I could.’
Setting the book to start at ‘three months till Christmas’ begs the question will everyone still be alive at for the festive celebration? I couldn’t possibly say!
This is a novel that you just have to discover for yourself. It is wonderfully written, the suspense and claustrophobia growing with each chapter. It is macabre and very funny indeed, given the narrator’s murderous intent. Victorian Psycho is certainly the most surprising and darkly entertaining book I’ve read so far this year. Virginia Feito is an author to watch!
Annabel is a co-founder and editor of Shiny.
Virginia Feito, Victorian Psycho (4th Estate, 2025). 978-0008739591, 195pp., flapped paperback original.
BUY at Blackwell’s via our affiliate link (free UK P&P)
