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A review by jesshindes
Mrs. S by K. Patrick
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
'Mrs S' is about an Australian woman in her early 20s who comes to England to take up a sort of general assistant job in a girls' boarding school. While there she begins an affair with the headmaster's wife, the titular (older, maybe 40-ish) Mrs S. And... that's mostly the story.
The protagonist is (probably?) a butch lesbian figuring things out about her identity; not her sexuality, as such, but how she inhabits it and her body; her gender. This is lent weight by the context, full of teenage girls (the Girls, as they're referred to throughout) who are also grappling with expectations around femininity and sexuality, and by the book's two other main characters: Mrs S (ostensibly in a heterosexual relationship with her husband, probably more bound by social expectations than she might like to admit) and the Housemistress (the other gay woman on staff). I really liked the way that the narrator's friendship with the Housemistress developed; there's a mixture of admiration, solidarity, envy to their interactions and what begins as a fairly tentative camaraderie ends up being a really meaningful relationship by the time the novel comes to a close (I would argue, more meaningful than the romance). In fact when I was trying to think about what the book was ~about I think it's probably about queer solidarity as much as anything; certainly that feels like where it lands up, although it's not really how the book's been marketed.
I found Patrick's style a challenge: there are no speech marks in the novel and most of the sentences are short, almost staccato, which makes it difficult to read fluently. I was constantly being brought up and forced to re-read, trying to understand who was saying what, which parts were being thought and which spoken aloud. This lack of specificity is echoed by other choices; as you may be able to tell from my discussion above, nobody in the book has names (only titles), the Girls often merge into a singular mob, and there's no indication at any point of the time period in which the novel is taking place. (There doesn't seem to be any mobile phone use, but there is a gay bar in the nearby town - I was guessing the 90s?) By the time I got to the end I didn't mind the prose styling so much - perhaps I'd got used to it - but at the outset I felt like the book was fighting me a bit. I think it's still worth it regardless but it's probably a personal preference thing; if you don't mind taking time over something that doesn't make fluency of reading its first priority, that forces you to slow down and take your time.
The protagonist is (probably?) a butch lesbian figuring things out about her identity; not her sexuality, as such, but how she inhabits it and her body; her gender. This is lent weight by the context, full of teenage girls (the Girls, as they're referred to throughout) who are also grappling with expectations around femininity and sexuality, and by the book's two other main characters: Mrs S (ostensibly in a heterosexual relationship with her husband, probably more bound by social expectations than she might like to admit) and the Housemistress (the other gay woman on staff). I really liked the way that the narrator's friendship with the Housemistress developed; there's a mixture of admiration, solidarity, envy to their interactions and what begins as a fairly tentative camaraderie ends up being a really meaningful relationship by the time the novel comes to a close (I would argue, more meaningful than the romance). In fact when I was trying to think about what the book was ~about I think it's probably about queer solidarity as much as anything; certainly that feels like where it lands up, although it's not really how the book's been marketed.
I found Patrick's style a challenge: there are no speech marks in the novel and most of the sentences are short, almost staccato, which makes it difficult to read fluently. I was constantly being brought up and forced to re-read, trying to understand who was saying what, which parts were being thought and which spoken aloud. This lack of specificity is echoed by other choices; as you may be able to tell from my discussion above, nobody in the book has names (only titles), the Girls often merge into a singular mob, and there's no indication at any point of the time period in which the novel is taking place. (There doesn't seem to be any mobile phone use, but there is a gay bar in the nearby town - I was guessing the 90s?) By the time I got to the end I didn't mind the prose styling so much - perhaps I'd got used to it - but at the outset I felt like the book was fighting me a bit. I think it's still worth it regardless but it's probably a personal preference thing; if you don't mind taking time over something that doesn't make fluency of reading its first priority, that forces you to slow down and take your time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Infidelity, Drug use, and Alcohol
Minor: Homophobia