Name: Mrs S
Rating: 3.25 (6 reviews)
ISBN: 9780008560997

K. Patrick

Mrs S

K.    Patrick

A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.” Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body.

That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.

Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.

Mrs. S

petrina

K Patrick

An Observer Best Debut of the Year ‘Oozes with erotic tension from the start’ Sarah Winman, author of Still Life ‘Sublime ... I loved this book’ Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea ‘Tense and taut and exhilarating’ Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually

This book was just so rich and beautiful and poetic that I was drawn into it. Rocked my world and had me just as obsessed with it as our lead was obsessed with Mrs. S. Also proof that there are not enough butch (main) characters in the world, and we cannot (should not) continue without them. 

Jacque

John Manoogian III

Stultifying, stagnant, linear. Hard to imagine taking these inputs and producing a work this unrequited and colorless, but here we are.

Author adopts the “no quotation marks” affectation and sadly (for readers) is also afflicted with the “unattributed dialog” disease, so that reading even a single paragraph is a painstaking slog without any utterances quoted or attributed to the speaker. Feels misanthropic, as does the book. 

I presume the publisher splurged on the attractive cover design as an apology for sending this book to print and inflicting it upon readers.

Perhaps a good gift for the masochist in your life? One star.

Bailee Strong

Imagining Jodie comer in this role instead of big Swiss , love a boarding school setting, love the butches, love the real thoughts!!!! Could’ve used some dialogue quotations y’know

Mrs S

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