I think this is superb. I have not read the author's first novel, but the quality of the writing in The Harpy is first-rate. Every sentence is a poetic gem (and that cover is insanely good). I found the character of Lucy, a mother of two boys and freelance copy-editor in a small university town (almost certainly Cambridge) easy to relate to - she is spinning her wheels even with the copy-editing jobs she manages to get, and has little to focus on but her family, but clings onto her former academic life and her former subject of research, the harpy of the title.

When her husband betrays her trust, and there are some suggestions that this continues, the two of them enter into an agreement where Lucy gets to dole out punishment to him (humiliation and in two cases, forms of physical violence). I suppose this is not for the faint-hearted and the ending (where Lucy transforms into the harpy, it seems) felt like a bit of a reach - but the prose is incredible and keeps you going, even when you don't always agree with how the characters are choosing to handle the situation they find themselves in.

To elaborate on that last point, while I'm sure no one would think what these characters do is a healthy response - whether that means the major or minor characters, both of whom behave in unexpected and dysfunctional ways - to me this highlights an uncomfortable truth, that there is no 'good' way of dealing with infidelity and we continue as a society to delude ourselves that whether we are men or women, betrayed or betrayer, we can somehow 'win' at this traumatic situation. I wouldn't do what Lucy does, but the sooner we shed this damaging myth, the better.

I’m afraid I found this very strange and weird if I’m honest. I hated the female character and now understand why it’s called harpy. Not one for me I’m afraid. I struggled to read it and it was very unsettling to read about a woman so hellbent on revenge.

** spoiler alert ** I found this quite an unsettling read,which means a memorable one.
When Lucy finds out her husband is having an affair,to all outwards appearances,she just carries on with life.
But she demands revenge,three times.. and when the first leaves her husband poisoned,you wonder how far she will take it.

I have to admit,I didn't like Jake,or at least not his attitude when he was found out... almost as if he blamed Lucy for still being upset.

By the end though,I was left wondering if this would be enough.. what might she do next.

Definitely something different. (

"I lift the razor and a fairy-tale drop of blood escapes from under the silver."

Megan Hunter’s debut novel “The End We Start From” was a ruthlessly pared back and fragmentary novella/prose poem, set in a dystopian future where London is submerged by unexpectedly catastrophic sea level rises just as the female narrator gives birth. It was woven through with italicised excerpts from mythological and religious texts around creation/flood and end times. It was a haunting book as well as an oblique meditation on the physicality of being a mother.

This her second novel has many links to the first.

The book still contains a meditation on motherhood, although the narrator and her circle of friends and colleagues have moved beyond the physicality of the first book – albeit into a period with its own challenges, particularly of thwarted career ambitions:

"But few of us had babies or even toddlers any more, and we spoke of those days with the kind of quiet reverence that elderly people use to speak about the war, our eyes misting over with the memory of the atmosphere, the breathy physicality, the murky blending of space and time. Now most of us had careers that were still on hold or had moved, somehow, to a forever part-time, lower-waged track. We were still many years away from the trickle of divorces that would begin just as our children became teenagers, their rebellions reminding us, in bodily, unavoidable forms, of worlds where things happened. For now, families were steady. In this place, most husbands had highly paid jobs, travelled a lot. Most wives, despite their multiple degrees, did all the school runs, counted the days until their men returned from Stockholm or Singapore."

And there are some superb lines on being a parent:

"It happened on a Friday, the boys in their last rhythm of the week, me trying to stay steady for them, a ship in dock, something you could hardly see the end of. I picked them up from school, administering snacks, absorbing shreds of their days, the wrappers from their sweets. "

The narrator of this book is Lucy Stevenson, married to Jake (a University researcher). The book effectively begins when, David Holmes, another University employee, leaves her a voice mail to say that Jake has been having an affair with David’s wife Vanessa (10 years older than Jake and a close colleague). David we are told when he calls “was careful to use surnames, for everyone. To make it official.” – of course a (I assume deliberate) contrast to the first book which had an unnamed narrator with her family known only by initials.

And interestingly whereas the first book is explicitly set in London, this one is in an unnamed University City (which seems to be Cambridge, although left vague as to whether it could also be Oxford).

Lucy was aware David was close to Vanessa but had dismissed an affair, assuming she was safer than David spending time with young graduate students and happy to take his late night working as an excuse to have some me-time, but now

"I watched a wave of my own ignorance gathering at the edge of my thoughts, low, like tsunamis seemed to be from a distance, threatening to overtake everything."

An image which with its idea of an impending flood, links to the first book, and to Lucy’s increased obsession with disaster.

Like the first novel the book draws heavily on mythology – but in this case one basic myth – that of the Harpy, a myth image which has fascinated Lucy since childhood

"When I was a child, there was a book – out of print now, expensive – about a unicorn who went into the sea and became a narwhal. The book had beautiful illustrations, dark blue seas, peach-pale evening skies. But the picture I remembered best was of the harpies, dark shadows, birds with women’s faces, who came down to torture the unicorn, to make him suffer. I asked my mother what a harpy was, and she told me: they punish men for the things they do."

And which later became the subject of her study and research.

Desperate to placate Lucy, Jake suggests that she takes physical revenge on him – and the two agree that she can inflict damage on him on three occasions (three picked for its religious echoes – again linking to the first book).

And the Lucy I feel explicitly draws on the legend of the Harpy for her three -fold revenge: the Harpy’s role in the story of King Phineus of Thrace in spoiling the food in a feast; the Harpy’s role in stealing possessions (in this case a phone and then an academic career) and the Harpy’s role in torture (particularly of those who have killed their own family).

Over time the book gathers depth in a number of ways: Lucy’s revenge becomes more dramatic in its consequences; we learn more of her past hurts and realise her revenge is not just on Jake and recent hurts, but a much longer period of hurt and stored up vengeance; we explore the themes of forgiveness against vengeance, of contrition against guilt – and most powerfully how over time society has mythologised female justice as being more unacceptable (and more importantly unnatural) than male transgressions; the book takes on more fantastical tones as Lucy more fully grows into her role as avenging harpy.

As the opening quote implies, this is a razor-sharp novel – using fantasy to explore its themes.

Recommended.

The Harpy, Megan Hunter

Review from Jeannie Zelos book reviews

Genre: General Fiction, Literary Fiction.

I love quirky, unusual reads and this book promised that.
The writing was mostly beautiful, but at times I felt it was a bit overdone, almost took away from the intent by the wordy descriptions. Even of simple things like the pasta sauce....and that for me took away the richness and importance of other parts.
I didn't like Jake, not that we really got to know him. Right from the fist I felt he had more remorse about being caught out than for the actual affair. He was concerned too about the effects of an action on Vanessa, the lady he cheated with, when I felt it should be Lucy he worried about.
Lucy is strange, I feel her childhood wasn't happy, with a father that beat her mother and she seemed to accept it, leading Lucy to feel that it was usual in a marriage. Then there's her childbirth problems, that left her with some deep issues. I felt that maybe she still had an underlying Post Natal depression that wasn't recognised.
Of course The Harpy – she was fascinated by them as a child, ( I too adored Greek and Roman mythology) and that's persisted as an adult. Now though it feels a bit as if she identifies herself as one, doing the punishment to a man who has done wrong. Her mother described them that way, and Lucy's depression/grief over the affair has turned inward and it feels as if she things The Harpy – her alter ego perhaps – has the answers and can make everything right.
We can see that though she appears confident and happy, she's very much not so. Her inner thoughts are rambling much of the time, making excuses and wondering why she isn't reacting as others do, as TV shows have taught her. She's almost playing a role, trying to fit who she thinks she should be rather than just Being. I really felt sad for her.
That ending....perfect.
Its a story that had me wondering why, how, who, what would happen if, and of course what really happened at the end. Its very disquieting in parts, but it gave me lots to think about. Its a shortish read but even so parts felt unnecessary, the minutiae of food, chores, day to day stuff that seemed superfluous. I began to skip over sections, to get to what was actually happening. Quite a discomforting read, no particularly nice characters.


Stars: Three, its a strange read at times, not really my usual genre but I like to dip out sometimes into something different. Its not a story I'd reread, though I'm glad I read it.

Arc via Netgalley and publishers

The Harpy by Megan Hunter is about a woman whose husband cheats on her and her reaction to that. I enjoyed it because I like the way she writes but not as much as her debut.

This is a fairly eerie book that should be read on a proper physical book and not on a kindle or anything else. It just reads that way, it's slow and pulls you in and makes you want to know what she will do next. It is worth a read and the cover is lovely. It's simplest story of infidelity and lies that gets turned into so much more.

This is short, sharp and smart (and oh, that glorious cover!) as her husband's infidelity is the catalyst for long-suppressed rage and violence to spill over in Lucy's psyche. Hunter keeps it impressionistic rather than directly linear and intimates how Lucy's upbringing as well as more institutionalised gender expectations have been seething beneath the surface. The image of the harpy works well and figures both as a symbol of feminised aggression as well as a motif that articulates self-alienation and a kind of fracturing of identity.

The writing is, however, in a style that I typically dislike: that dreamy 'poetic' prose (think Daisy Johnson or Jessica Andrews' Saltwater) that smacks of creative writing class and which can too often prioritise pretty combinations of words which, scutinised, don't stand up to much: 'the virgin blue of his notification light in the darkness' (why 'virgin blue'? Ok, I get that the notification reveals infidelity but it's a tenuous connection at best), 'the oil shimmers, gold leaf on deep red heat' (it's just a pasta sauce, for heaven's sake!). It's also hard that so much of this book is taken up with domestic minutiae: bathing the kids, making their tea (fish fingers, since you ask), picking them up from school - again, I can see that this reflects the burden of Lucy's domestic work but it's dull reading.

I suspect this could have been tautened up to make a brilliant short story - spun out to novella length it starts to sag a bit.

One day, amid the daily humdrum of chores and child-care, a phone call stirs the silence. A message is delivered. Lucy's husband is having an affair. And, just like that, or maybe long before, the harpy is awoken.

This novel was constructed in such an interesting format. Lucy, when faced with her husband's infidelity, moves through the range of emotions movies and TV shows have taught her to feel. These are experienced only at surface level and, beneath them, the only way she truly feels she can heal begins to reveal itself - three hurts for the ongoing one he has done to her.

Sequestering these scenes from Lucy's life are the movements of the harpy, a mythological being combining the features of a woman with those of a bird. These are brief and detail Lucy's childhood attachment with them, her university research reveals their journey from Greek and Roman mythology to the present, and her present predicament welcomes their arrival.

Despite the catastrophe that is played out, this is somehow still a quiet novel. It is very inwardly focused, relying on simmering emotion amongst daily suburban trivialities and small acts of vengeance which later culminate to one of staggering and unprecedented proportions.

The ending feels glaringly inconclusive, but not in an unlikable fashion. It felt fitting that the reader gets to decide whether this harpy grew her wings and took flight, or uncurled her talons for one final act against those who had wronged her.