An author’s wife sinks into paranoid fantasy after a social slight in an accomplished comedy-horror too arch for its own good
If you were to generalise about psychological thrillers – a genre label now applied to pretty much any novel in which someone has a buried secret – you could say that they rely on our fascination with the gulf between civilised appearances and the potential brutality that lurks beneath.
Mrs March, Virginia Feito’s accomplished debut, plays knowingly with these tropes, finely balancing the two aspects of her story – New York comedy of manners and gothic horror – so that each feels like the other’s natural counterpoint. Her heroine, who is only ever referred to by her married title until the final page, is obsessed to the point of paranoia with how she is regarded. Even motherhood is a competitive performance (her husband already has a daughter from his first marriage): “As a way to prove to everyone she could rear an infinitely more gracious and sensitive child, and also as a sort of punishment to Paula, Mrs March herself had a child.”