Book Review: "Victorian Psycho" by Virginia Feito

Virginia Feito is the mastermind behind one of the greatest modern suburban horrors written in the last decade: Mrs March is one of the best books I've read in a long time. I was keeping my eye on anything else she was set to write and then I saw it: Victorian Psycho. I read the blurb that was on Amazon far before the release date and just kept watching it. When it came out though, I didn't have the money to get it! I was so sad and so, I saved up some extra money which was the exact amount I needed to buy Victorian Psycho on Kindle. I was so happy. I knew it was going to be good. It's Virginia Feito... I have faith...

Winifred arrives to be a governess for the children of a wealthy and slightly dysfunctional family. Immediately, she is a striking presence because what we know of her is that she is entirely derranged and has some really terrifying tendencies. It's like she's Jane Eyre if Jane had the personality of one of those weird vampiric women who attacked Jonathan Harker in Dracula. She is horrifying and absolutely insane and the more she narrates this story, the worse it gets. Just like in Mrs March, Virginia Feito proves that she has a knack for writing repressed emotions in women and how they ultimately come undone. The ending of this book really does seem in the sense, as inevitable as the ending in her previous book - I love that about her work.

One thing I have to say I loved about this book is the Victorian atmosphere of the upper class mixed with the horrifying graphic nature of bodily goings-on. From talking about brains and corpses, to discussions about things that are much more disgusting considering how people taste. The narrator weaves her thoughts in and out of the narrative with Feito making it clear that as the story progresses, they are breaking through more and more. It not only gives us a great sense of what's happening in the character's mind, but also a good judgement of the pace at which it is happening.

The place she is working at is called Ensor House and the children are really weird kids. We have a child called Drusilla who is about to make her first appearance at a party and is fairly excited about becoming a teenager and getting treated better. Winifred is tasked with taking her to the Christmas party and looking after her, tending to her in every way whilst she witnesses all these rich and snobby people carry on about their way, ignoring the entire world and being their selfish selves. Every step of the way, Winifred's thoughts are breaking through and shaping her sense of self. She wants to move forward on her thoughts.

There's also a lot of gross depictions of murder. For example: a baby has its artery slashed and then, there's a replacement of the baby. There's a murder of a maid who gets dragged about the house, bleeding out. If you think: 'hey how is this possible without anyone noticing?' That is the very point. The satire of Victorian upper class society means that Feito's observation is that it is almost comedic how blind they are to all this stuff. This, on top of the graphic descriptions shows us why the ending is the way it is. The abrupt and almost cynical way the story ends reflects that of Mrs March but also is tinged with annoyance. It is pretty clever.

Virginia Feito also knows how to make these very almost nostalgic dream-like atmospheres turn very quickly into nightmare landscapes for repressed horrors. In Mrs March we have this 1950s suburban landscape where we see a lot of modern men feeling nostalgic for it since that is an era where women could not have a lot of freedoms including bank accounts. However, if we really critique the oppression that women had to face day in and day out, especially if we move back to the Victorian era, we get repressed thoughts and feelings. The extreme of that is a Virginia Feito novel. And we are all here for it!

All in all, you can tell I had a wonderful time with this book. It was filled with horror and social criticism. It also had moments of dark comedy and moments of depicting the upper class very obviously as inept in every sense of the word. I have to say that I absolutely loved it and cannot wait for Virginia Feito's next novel.