The pace in the first half was just a wee bit slower than I would have preferred, but the second half of the book was beautiful. The friendship between the main character and the housemistress was very touching.  

An atmospheric novel about blinding desire, from the perspective of an internal, quiet soul. As their love grows, as does their friendship with a fellow traveller, with each relationship helping them become whole.

April book club read! (Sam, please don’t hate me for this review, I still love you 🫶) I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle through slow reads, so that definitely contributed to my lack of interest in this book until about halfway through. It picked up pace for me when things heated up (and boy, did they heat up) but I still found the characters really unlikable, despite the fact that I had every reason to find them relatable (this does not include the Housemistress, that’s my GIRL). That being said, what I DID love about this book is that it’s quite possibly the gayest book I’ve ever read (said with much enthusiasm). Also, the power imbalance between the love interests left an icky taste in my mouth at times, making it difficult to appreciate the romance. While I have my qualms with this one, it’s still worth a read for anyone who loves queer literature 😌

Quite a good read. Enjoyed the writing style, it was unique yet still smooth and easy to get through (besides the lack of quotation marks - that always causes some confusion for me). Wish the ending wasn’t so abrupt, but it definitely held a (to me, positive) plot twist. Feel like it showed growth in the main character that I honestly didn’t expect. I loved how deep of a look we got of the main character, constant inner dialogue and often relatable thoughts. Kind of gives similar vibes to movie aesthetics like Normal People. To me at least. 

Diversity-wise, clearly a lesbian romance, with one main character also being gender-questioning and/or masculine-presenting and/or butch. Also appreciated the depiction of a positive lgbtq+ friendship shown throughout, but no descriptions gave way of any races besides white, so a bit euro-centric. Therefore “it’s complicated” for diversity. 

Also wish the author had the main character introspect / probe Mrs. S more about the sudden yet brief scene of catching two of The Girls kissing. It clearly had a large affect on her as someone who must hide their queerness, and Mrs. S’ reaction was disappointing considering her usual demeanor towards The Girls and her own recent sexual awakening (not super recent, as she mentioned experimenting before in college, but this time declared it love) - it makes sense how she reacted, being that she clearly had internalized homophobia and was confused and frustrated with herself so didn’t know how to even respond to the girls, but would’ve liked to see more character growth from Mrs. S, overall, looking back. But, I didn’t expect it since the end has the main character leave and it’s a book following her internal dialogue more than anything

 

Came for the plot, stayed for the prose.

'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.