Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Madam by Phoebe Wynne

2 reviews

effy's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

A dark gothic tale where the reader is left wondering what is happening for a large chunk of the book. As frustrating as it was to not know what was truly going-on, I appreciated that the reader only had as much knowledge as our protag.

An incredibly troubling premise, executed beautifully.

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unfiltered_fiction's review against another edition

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dark slow-paced
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I received a free eARC of this book via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

I really struggled to get through this book. There were definitely elements with strong potential within it, but I don't feel that those elements were ever realised. Please note that this is a book which comes with heavy content warnings; I highly advise checking content warnings before you pick this book up if you are a sensitive reader.

My greatest issue with Madam is that it felt centred around some highly tokenistic and hypocritical versions of feminism and anti-racism. In the attempt to liberate its women and girls, this book often falls short with a less visible, more subversive form of oppression. For a story that tries to tackle a hyperbolised form of institutionalised sexism, I was disappointed by how regressive and oversimplified some of the content was. For example, the main character - who is supposedly meant to save the girls of Caldonbrae from their gender-based oppression -  says that she wears lipstick every day to defy her feminist mother.

The intersection of racism with sexism is also inherently problematic, as for a substantial portion of the book, the main character - supposedly outraged at the exclusion of BAME students at the school - simply refers to every non-white student at Caldonbrae Hall as "the Asian girls", making no effort to directly interact with them until she is assigned a brief period of looking after them. They are present as a secondary theme rather than as characters in their own right. A scene in the second half of the book also shows a problematic and appropriative attitude towards geisha culture.

The Gothic elements of the storytelling lack lustre. The prose is not particularly atmospheric - though sections of the book are strong; it feels that the author hits her stride particularly well between 50% and 80% of the digital version - and it is very obvious where each plot device is leading. The structure of the story is very obviously formulaic, and it relies heavily on Gothic tropes which are mediocre in their execution -
stormy weather, disruption of private spaces and personal property, cleansing through fire, wrongful imprisonment.
The sense of threat to Rose, the main character, does not feel more the vaguely present until very late in the book, and it makes absolutely no sense as to why she doesn't at least attempt to leave the school earlier. 

I took real umbrage to the ending.
It felt incredibly lazy and very predictable to resolve the problem of the school with a mass fire, begun during a ball for the upper sixth girls, their future husbands, and other adults involved in their grooming. The most authentic element of this key plot point was that the girls who set the fire referred to Dido, Queen of Carthage, and her suicide atop a mock funerary pyre. This event also has major plot holes, as it is inferred that every one of the younger girls got out safely, whilst every single one of the adults involved in their abuse died - yet only a few pages before the fire begins, the main character sees one of the upper sixth girls slipping into the grounds with an older man, so the reader knows that not every single guest is in the hall where our narrator insists the adults were trapped.


I enjoyed the Classical inferences, but felt that they could have been much better embedded in the story itself, rather than presenting each portrait of a Classical woman as an "interlude". The conversations that Rose, the main character, has with her three favourites - Freddie, Nessa, and Daisy - were by far the best element of the book. I really loved the characters of Freddie, Nessa, and Daisy, and felt that this story would have been better told through their eyes. Most other characters felt quite fragmentary and two dimensional. These three girls, however, were handled well, with a good blend of sympathy and honesty towards their characters.

I have to admit that I'm disappointed that this is one of Quercus' hero/flagship publications for 2021. It feels significantly behind the times, and erroneously lacking in nuance, especially considering the very difficult central theme of child grooming and abuse. I may have been slightly more receptive to the book if it hadn't been lauded so much. 

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