If profoundly disturbed is how you want to walk away from a book…well, look no further. And sure, women have been going mad in fiction for ages, they’ve been secreted away in the attics and madhouses, there was fire, wallpapers, other women to contend and compete with and usually a man behind it all, a brute or sadist or bastard or some combination thereof. But what if there was a madness that needed no assist to descend, something more…organic, if you will. What if a woman went mad from within, after years of internalized emotional child abuse from an uncaring mother after an unwanted sexual experience, after decades of social conditioning right to a marriage that offered comfort and entirely too much time to let all the ingredients simmer together into something combustible. That’s pretty much Mrs. March’s tragic trajectory. The eponymous protagonist, the owner of the spiffy gloves on the cover, a woman who is a star of her own show to such an extent that her entire life is structured in a precisely performative way.
Mrs. March’s greatest role is that of a wife to Mr. March, an acclaimed author and, with his latest book, the toast of the town. She is his wife, a mother of his child, a woman hosting his swanky soirees, a getter of his clen shirts, a manager of his maid, etc. So much so that she doesn’t even get a first name until the last page, her entire personality built around her marital title. Every action, every word…a finely tuned performance. A laborious difficult to sustain act. It’s no surprise it can’t last, but it’s the way it all goes off the rails that’ll have you absolutely riveted. This descent into madness is rendered with all the mesmerizing wrongness of a car crash magnetism. It’s a novel of a certain time and place, say 70s, when women roles in the society were define with claustrophobic strictness, but not so much that there were no other options, which implies a certain complicity. For, just because Mrs. March was brought up to be a certain kind of a proper young lady, doesn’t mean she’s made no choices along the way. Once upon a time she was thrilled to bag the handsomest professor on campus. And she has enjoyed years of a certain quality of glitz on his arm and by his side. The toll it’s all has taken on her psyche is difficult to estimate, because she’s such a tightly held together character for so long and when she unravels, it’s a spectacular and dangerous mess. But it’s so good, it’s really good. This is for fans of Yellow Wallpaper, who thought the protagonist there was too likeable. You won’t have to deal with that here. There are virtually no likeable characters, but lately I’ve been finding a nice line up of books that are good enough to not need that easy attractor. Just terrible people doing terrible things to each other, with or without intent, sometimes just because they can’t help themselves, sometimes thoughtlessly and yes, sometimes with a frightening purpose. And of course, something they are just completely mad. You can make your own assessments of Mrs. March. She’d expect no less, being her own worst enemy and all that. And to think it all began with Mr. March’s new book and a character in it who everyone thinks must be based on his wife. And oh, did it snowball from there. Such small things, such careless acts… I was initially interested in this book after finding out that Elizabeth Moss optioned it for a movie, a Blumhouse movies no less. So reading it, she was impossible not to picture. And if the movie’s done right and taken seriously, this can be award material, finally, for an actress who very much deserves it. Not sure how she found this book, a random debut by a Spanish author and all that, but that’s a great find. And Moss, being easily one of the best actresses of her generation with incredible versatility and talent, is going to kill this one, appropriately enough. For now, though, it’s only in book form, you’ll have to use your imagination, though not too much, the author does a terrific job of bringing a cinematically vivid quality to it all by herself. Brain punch of a book. Must read for fans of dark psychological fiction. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.
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