The Harpy

Description

'Brilliant . . . A deeply unsettling, excellent read' - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under 'A potent contemporary fable . . . riveting' - Guardian 'Genuinely thrilling . . . one long beautiful scream' - Evie Wyld Lucy lives with her husband Jake and their two boys. Her life is devoted to her children, her days mapped out by their finely tuned routine. Until a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy's husband. He thought she should know. Lucy is distraught. She decides to stay with Jake, if only for the children's sake, but in order to even the score, they agree that she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, or what form it will take. And so begins a delicate game of crime and punishment, from which there is no return . . . Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy by Megan Hunter is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal. 'Utterly compelling . . . precise and darkly truthful' Esther Freud

Megan Hunter's first novel, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US, and Canada, and has been translated into eight languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Awards, longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize, was a Barnes and Noble Discover Awards finalist and won the Forward Reviews Editor's Choice Award. Her writing has appeared in publications including The White Review, The TLS, Literary Hub, and BOMB Magazine. She lives in Cambridgeshire with her husband, son and daughter.

The Harpy is brilliant. Hunter imbues the everyday with apocalyptic unease. A deeply unsettling, excellent read. -- Daisy Johnson, Booker shortlisted author of Everything Under In The Harpy, Hunter has articulated female rage in a way that lives on in your bones and in your gut. A genuinely thrilling read, one long beautiful scream. -- Evie Wyld Megan Hunter's potent contemporary fable about the enduring taboo of female fury becomes especially relevant. Every bit as riveting as her debut The End We Start From . . . the ensuing drama blends mythic motifs with pointed swipes at modern motherhood's double binds. * Guardian * The Harpy is an almost perfect book. The premise is so simple, and the execution so flawless . . . I've talked about it more than anything else I've read so far this year: I love explaining the set-up to friends and watching their eyes widen. It's so dark and so much fun. -- Kristen Roupenian, author of Cat Person Hunter writes viscerally and incisively about the taboos of female desire and rage . . . [a] striking, pared-down modern myth * Daily Mail * A fiery tale of infidelity . . . she manages to elevate her story to something that is at once rooted in the everyday and effortlessly transcends it . . . a gripping, psychologically astute account of a relationship in free-fall * Scotsman * Sentence after sentence made my skin bump. Not just with what the sentence said, but because the writing was so very, very good. It's a brilliant piece of work. -- Cynan Jones, author of Cove Utterly compelling . . . so precise and darkly truthful. I thought it succeeding in illuminating - with flair and originality - the damage done by betrayal. -- Esther Freud I was utterly spellbound. Her dark humour and pointillist prose puts her in league with Lydia Davis and Jenny Offil, masterfully rendering the emotional shock of a protagonist finding her life has become story. -- Olivia Sudjic, author of Sympathy A sharp, timely and darkly funny novel about maternal love and sacrifice, and the incandescent rage that festers beneath it. Hunter's writing is beautiful and spare, uncanny and hilarious. I utterly loved it. -- Luiza Sauma, author of Flesh and Bone and Water A beautifully written, viscerally disturbing novel that turns the narrative of the cheated-on wife on its head -- Laura Kaye, author of English Animals Megan Hunter effortlessly compels us to feel both heartbreak and the momentary gratification of revenge . . . devastating in its evocation of the expense and sometimes fatal strain of passion, grief, and rage.' -- Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut The Harpy is a taut and lyrical novel about cosily calibrated lives coming spectacularly undone. Compulsively absorbing yet otherworldly, both a fever dream and a gorgeous and alarming howl of rage. -- Sharlene Teo, author of Ponti In hungry, restless prose, Megan Hunter tears apart the seam between motherhood and the monstrous. She confronts the fear of female anger and asks us what happens when pain that has been swallowed through generations begins to rush to the surface. -- Jessica Andrews, author of Saltwater On one level it is the psychological excavation of a suburban marriage on the rocks, on another, a spell to summon primeval feminine power. Above all, it is prose informed by poetry . . . a brilliant and eviscerating work of literary fiction * Review 31 * With shades of Carmen Maria Machado and Karen Russell, Hunter turns in an unforgettable magical realist story of power, revenge, and transformation. * Esquire * A blisteringly tense, brilliant book about adultery, betrayal, motherhood and revenge -- Amanda Craig