The Harpy
by Megan Hunter
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Pub Date 3 Sep 2020 | Archive Date 26 Apr 2021
Pan Macmillan | Picador
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Description
From the acclaimed author of The End We Start From, The Harpy is a fierce tale of love, betrayal and revenge.
'The Harpy is brilliant . . . A deeply unsettling, excellent read.' Daisy Johnson
Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, he wants her to know.
The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.
As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body 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.
Advance Praise
‘The Harpy is an almost perfect book. The premise is so simple, and the execution so flawless. It feels like a fairy tale not only because of its aura of mystery and the purity of its structure, but because the story itself is so fundamental you could imagine it being told and re-told in a thousand different forms. In a way, the book feels more discovered than crafted, like the manuscript ought to have been found locked in a trunk in an attic somewhere, or translated off an old rock slab. I've talked about it more than anything else I've read so far this year.’ Kristen Roupenian
‘In The Harpy, a confession of a woman who refuses to inhabit the world under false pretenses, Megan Hunter effortlessly compels us to feel both heartbreak and the momentary gratification of revenge. It is a book about love and betrayal — that between husband and wife, and parent and child — and it is devastating in its evocation of the expense and sometimes fatal strain of passion, grief, and rage.’ Susanna Moore
‘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
‘Brilliant. Hunter imbues the everyday with apocalyptic unease. A deeply unsettling, excellent read.’ Daisy Johnson
‘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
‘Both timeless and timely, 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. Megan Hunter is a distinctive force of talent who portrays scenes of marriage, young parenthood, and mutable womanhood in fierce and fresh ways.’ Sharlene Teo
‘It’s utterly compelling and I read it without pause. So precise and darkly truthful. I thought it succeeded in illuminating - with flair and originality - the damage done by betrayal.’ Esther Freud
‘A beautifully written, viscerally disturbing novel that turns the narrative of the cheated-on wife on its head.’ Laura Kaye
‘Sentence after sentence made my skin bump. Not just with what the sentence said, but because the writing was so very, very good.’ Cynan Jones
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781529010213 |
| PRICE | £14.99 (GBP) |
| PAGES | 256 |
Featured Reviews
Daisy A, Bookseller
In it’s opening pages Lucy’s finely tuned evening routine, feeding her children, enjoying alone time if her husband Jake is caught out by unruly train timetables on his evening commute is shattered when she receives an unexpected phone call: the caller delivers the news that her husband has been having an affair with a university colleague. To save their marriage they agree on a special arrangement- Lucy can hurt him back, whenever and however she pleases, three times.
But can retaliation really lead to forgiveness? As Lucy allows herself the pleasure and release of hurting Jake she confronts the deeper implications of the affair, the destruction of trust, the embarrassment of sympathetic friends, the loss of a companionable intimacy.
There is more to Lucy than the complacent housewife her husband, and her own patriarchal ideals have conjured. Through accompanying dazzling prose that seamlessly interweaves with the main narrative, we uncover a younger Lucy’s fascination with the mythical figure of the Harpy. This ancient beast, a monstrous bird of prey with the head and body of a woman, serves in the Homeric poems as agents of punishment, cruel and violent they epitomize an innate female rage.
It is this contrast that truly makes the novel stand out. That of the very real world of marriage, family, and motherhood with its focuses on compassion, even in the face of the extreme sadness, hatred, envy, and betrayal that mark even the most ordinary of lives. While the boundless expression of an uncompromisingly hostile Harpy displays the freedom, yet dehumanisation, that comes from giving in to base desires of destruction. As the novel progresses it becomes hard to distinguish where Lucys thaughts end and the Harpy’s begin.
The Harpy gives ordinary issues a fantastical lens that transforms a story of infidelity into a dreamlike exploration into the deepest dark depths of marriage, feminity, and the possibilities of forgiveness.
Lynne P, Reviewer
This book is the very definition of a domestic noir. It is dark, intense and at times slightly perverse but it is most definitely good. The language is almost poetic and the descriptions of domestic mundanity are quite perfectly observed. The premise for this story in someways seems quite simple but the further you read the more thought provoking and deeper it becomes. The mythical Harpy plays her role perfectly as she flies along beside the narrative casting her shadow over the story and the lives of Lucy and her family.
Lucy and Jake have a perfectly balanced life in their comfortable home with their two children, until one day Lucy receives a phone call...The caller leaves a message saying that her husband is having an affair.
Lucy and Jake decide to stay together but in order to balance the pain out it is agreed that Lucy can hurt Jake three times. Jake will not know what form and when this will take place. But will this be enough to save their relationship?
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