If Madam aims at being a horror novel, I think where it failed is that, instead of building a sense of unease, a sense of foreboding, it just managed to make me feel progressively more and more uncomfortable. Its plot almost straddles the line between a thriller and something more horrific, but fulfilling neither particularly successfully.

The story follows Rose Christie (and forgive me if I’m wrong here, but is this not the name of the author of My Immortal?), who is offered a job as Head of Classics at a remote all-girls’ school in Scotland, Caldonbrae Hall. But Caldonbrae Hall is not all that it seems to be, with strange terminology it seems Rose is not yet allowed to know. And then the truth starts to come to light…

I think, primarily, I didn’t like about this book that its plot twists amounted to revealing that the entire school was set up to groom and sexually abuse young girls. Obviously, this is not in and of itself a story not to be told, but I feel it should be told in a different way. A way where, perhaps, each successive reveal isn’t just placed there to disgust you further (shall we talk about how, at one point, there’s the revelation that a group of Japanese girls are kept there, to be sold as prostitutes (this review has a better analysis of that than I could provide)? Or when Rose walks in on girls being taught how to pleasure one of their teachers?). There is the occasional handwaving attempt at mentioning the sheer amount of damage this could do to the girls (and vague mentions of how they’re “brainwashed to want the abuse”), but there’s no real dwelling on it. It’s a plot and book framed to shock the sensibilities of both Rose and its readers. And that, I think, is where it goes fatally wrong.

None of it is treated with any sense of respect. Case in point is the difference between the girls that Rose likes and the ones she does not — those primarily being the ones who are in positions of relative power as students. Each has been abused in this school, that much Rose does allow. But she considers those she likes (i.e. those who like her) in much more positive terms than those she does not (i.e. those who don’t like her, for whatever reason). She sees those she likes as victims, those she does not as somehow not.

I think where this book also falls short is that it fails to imbue any sense of hope in the narrative. You watch this school, the insistence of it that there’s nothing wrong here, Rose’s inability to get word out and get help, steadily chip away at her resolve and think, okay maybe it ends with her entire buy-in. And I guess that’s the horror of it. That this is how these things start to work, you start to rationalise the small things and then the bigger things steadily shrink in size. The slippery slope argument of psychology.

But, God, does it make for a depressing read. This is where I think it seems to try and fail to straddle thriller and horror. The horror is in this slippery slope, but the subject matter seems more like it was going for a thriller. Where, in the end, the bad guys get their comeuppance and the good guys win. Instead, it’s almost by chance that Rose gets out of it, gets the girls out of it.

And then, just to make things even more depressing, the epilogue hints at the entire cycle starting over again.

I really wanted to like Madam. I chose to request it because I had seen it said it was good for fans of Margaret Atwood but I was disappointed. I made it through about 17% of the book before I decided that I couldn't bring myself to read anymore.

Rose has recently acquired a job at a prestigious school for girls in Scottland. When she starts her new job the students are obstructive at best and her fellow teachers are unhelpful and generally unfriendly. Rose finds the numerous rules difficult to understand and feels very much an outsider.

All of this had me intrigued enough to keep reading, this and the odd hint of something sinister going on behind the scenes but it was a bit slow paced for me.

I was drawn to this when I saw it was for fans of Margaret Atwood as I loved The Handsmaid Tale and this did not disappoint

This is a book which will keep you guessing and eager to keep on reading until you’ve finished. If you’re after an easy read you don’t need to really absorb yourself in then this probably isn’t for you

I think the title could do with a bit of work but it doesn’t reflect on the brilliant story inside

It’s rare to read a debut that is this intricate and has the ability to keep you holding your breath as you turn the page. I’d been attracted to this book by it he initial comparison by some to Donna Tartt- the way she weaves tales so that a world as vivid as the one you are in is in your hands has been, in my view, unmatched. Until now, that is. I’ve been telling friends that they have to read this book- without detailing much of the plot because I don’t want to spoil the moments that made me gasp!

The book is set in the early 1990s when Rose goes to teach Classics at Caldonbrae- a prestigious boarding school for girls, but all is not as it seems and as Rose uncovers uncomfortable truths she finds herself trapped. I couldn’t see a resolution until it was cleverly placed before me- although it had been in front of me the whole time!! This isn’t a book to read if you’re wanting wishy washy easy to read escapism - I couldn’t put it down or get Caldonbrae out of my mind even after I finished.

I wasn’t so keen on the title (and hope it doesn’t put others off) nor did I car for the detailed references to the Classics but overall this is one of my favourite books ever. Not only can I not wait for the release date to buy a hard copy (no doubt, like the books by Tartt I read again and again I will be returning to this) but also for future books from this author! A breathtaking piece of art!

A deeply dark and atmospheric book, Madam is reminiscent of du Maurier's Rebecca.

Following the story of Rose, a young Classics teacher, as she steps into teaching at the mysterious Caldonbrae school, Madam is a book that will stick with you.

Rose already feels uncomfortable moving from the state sector to an elite private school but as the story unfolds, we learn just how deep the differences run.

A girls' boarding school on a windy and isolated peninsula, Caldonbrae prides itself on educating young girls to become the perfect elite woman. Rose battles on with trying to teach boisterous classes and snooty sixth formers Classics whilst slowly uncovering the school's dark goal.

Secrets and Latin in a gothic setting, it certainly makes a good read. But be aware that it will likely make you feel deeply uneasy. It is not an easy read. As a teacher myself, I found myself regularly urging Rose to find a way out for herself and her students.

Nevertheless, the atmosphere is enveloping and it is clear than Wynne knows her stuff. Her background as a Classics teacher herself is evident in every classroom scene - she perfectly captures the chaos of a lesson going wrong. I also greatly enjoyed the regular synopses of famous women of ancient history, mythology, and tragedy.

I did feel that the ending wasn't quite what I hoped and I personally think it would have benefitted from a little more length. However, that doesn't detract from the overall quality of the book. A very good read, but do having a palate cleanser ready to follow!

Caldonbrae Hall is a boarding school for girls situated on the Scottish cliffs .
Rose Christie has just been appointed as Head of Classics and arrives looking forward to the challenge.
However, what she finds is not what she expects. The students are cold and nasty, the traditions are strange and her fellow teachers are secretive.
Then Rose discovers what is really going on at the school. Can she save her girls and if so to what cost to herself.
Will she ever be free again to live a normal life?

Set in 1990s UK in an elite girls boarding school - it was an interesting twist on the private school theme and I especially enjoyed the references to Greek mythology. Frustrating reading in parts and the text seemed to jump in places without really finishing the scene. Slow to start but a page turner towards the end.

As a lover of The Handmaid’s Tale, which the blurb said this was similar to, I thought this would be a great read. However, I was very disappointed with it overall. I lost patience with the main character around half way through and found her very irritating and wouldn’t have continued to the end of the book except I received this free copy in return for a review and so felt obligated to continue. There was so much potential in the idea and yet the plot didn’t live up to that expectation and the passive nature of the character and not challenging the controlling/grooming actions of others was unbelievable. Shame the original idea wasn’t carried through more effectively.

Rose accepts a position as Head of Classics at Caldonbrae, an exclusive girls boarding school. But clearly there are secrets, no-one is willing to explain to her exactly how the school works, and at least one of the pupils seems to be obsessed with her. The school is willing to make sure her unwell mother is properly provided for, but they hold all the power and don't keep Rose informed. Some of her classes are more engaged than others, and start to ask more detail about the women of Greek myths.

It's set in the 90s, but even for the 90s the big secret feels quite dated. That's partly the point, but it does stretch credibility somewhat. And it feels a lot like it could all have been resolved if Rose had just sat down and asked proper questions of her colleagues instead of them all dodging round issues (but then so many books have that issue!). It's readable, and the younger girls who get into the classical myths are an engaging group. And the Greek myths are a nice inclusion, which break up the story but help to give both Rose and the girls more agency.

I received a free eARC of this book via Netgalley in return for an honest review.

Firstly, I'd like to note that the format of the eARC was not very well done - there were random line breaks, sections where paragraphs were not spaced out, no page break between chapters, sections where the font was in a different colour, etc. In the interest of fairness, I must say this impacted on the flow of my reading, and I might have found the narrative a little smoother to follow had this been fixed.

However, I really struggled to get through this book for many more reasons than the formatting. There were definitely elements with strong potential within it, but I don't feel that those elements were ever realised.

My greatest issue with Madam is that it felt centred around some highly tokenistic and hypocritical versions of feminism and anti-racism. In the attempt to liberate its women and girls, this book often falls short with a less visible, more subversive form of oppression. For a story that tries to tackle a hyperbolised form of institutionalised sexism, I was disappointed by how regressive and oversimplified some of the content was. For example, the main character - who is supposedly meant to save the girls of Caldonbrae from their gender-based oppression - says that she wears lipstick every day to defy her feminist mother.

The intersection of racism with sexism is also inherently problematic, as for a substantial portion of the book, the main character - supposedly outraged at the exclusion of BAME students at the school - simply refers to every non-white student at Caldonbrae Hall as "the Asian girls", making no effort to directly interact with them until she is assigned a brief period of looking after them. They are present as a secondary theme rather than as characters in their own right. A scene in the second half of the book also shows a problematic and appropriative attitude towards geisha culture.

The Gothic elements of the storytelling lack lustre. The prose is not particularly atmospheric - though sections of the book are strong; it feels that the author hits her stride particularly well between 50% and 80% of the digital version - and it is very obvious where each plot device is leading. The structure of the story is very obviously formulaic, and it relies heavily on Gothic tropes which are mediocre in their execution - stormy weather, disruption of private spaces and personal property, cleansing through fire, wrongful imprisonment. The sense of threat to Rose, the main character, does not feel more the vaguely present until very late in the book, and it makes absolutely no sense as to why she doesn't at least attempt to leave the school earlier.

I took real umbrage to the ending. It felt incredibly lazy and very predictable to resolve the problem of the school with a mass fire, begun during a ball for the upper sixth girls, their future husbands, and other adults involved in their grooming. The most authentic element of this key plot point was that the girls who set the fire referred to Dido, Queen of Carthage, and her suicide atop a mock funerary pyre. This event also has major plot holes, as it is inferred that every one of the younger girls got out safely, whilst every single one of the adults involved in their abuse died - yet only a few pages before the fire begins, the main character sees one of the upper sixth girls slipping into the grounds with an older man, so the reader knows that not every single guest is in the hall where our narrator insists the adults were trapped.

I enjoyed the Classical inferences, but felt that they could have been much better embedded in the story itself, rather than presenting each portrait of a Classical woman as an "interlude". The conversations that Rose, the main character, has with her three favourites - Freddie, Nessa, and Daisy - were by far the best element of the book. I really loved the characters of Freddie, Nessa, and Daisy, and felt that this story would have been better told through their eyes. Most other characters felt quite fragmentary and two dimensional. These three girls, however, were handled well, with a good blend of sympathy and honesty towards their characters.

I have to admit that I'm disappointed that this is one of Quercus' hero/flagship publications for 2021. It feels significantly behind the times, and erroneously lacking in nuance, especially considering the very difficult central theme of child grooming and abuse. I may have been slightly more receptive to the book if it hadn't been lauded so much.

A gripping chilling read which was horrifyingly uncomfortable in part.
I think there was just about the right balance of greek mythology mixed in with the 'story' so it didn't dominate but instead provided a backdrop for change.

There was much to enjoy here, but I found I couldn't connect with it. I'd read more from this author in the future though.

There is something utterly claustrophobic and unsettling about this novel. Rose is a teacher with experience in state schools, and is offered a job in a girls-only boarding school in Scotland - Caldonbrae. It’s prestigious, one of the top schools in the country, and boasts excellent prospects for the girls who are educated there.

Despite being set in the early nineties, Rose seems to be transported into the late 1800s as soon as she sets foot in Caldonbrae. Antiquated ideas and dialogue, an odd feeling of submission, and a lack of independence for all permeates the walls. Tradition must be adhered to, modern progressions are ignored entirely, and the girls seem to be heavily indoctrinated into the system. Rose soon finds that leaving the school, even to visit the nearby village, is frowned upon, alongside her more ‘modern’ ideas for the girls’ advancement in their careers and lifestyles. Feelings of imprisonment soon creep in, and small hints as to the true nature of the school create unbridled feelings of tension.

I was swept along with the mysteries of this archaic school and its belief systems, but I did find the pace and structure to be slightly slow and jarring. Wynne flips around in her narrative regularly, with some sections seeming to be quite irrelevant. There’s a lot of moments of Rose pondering the same things continuously, or walking in moody weather with no real crux to the thing.

The characters, particularly the students, seemed a bit one-dimensional, but I am prepared to put that down to how the school was trying to model them into perfection. Of course, Rose was placed there by Wynne as a conflict, to rise up against the moral problem, but there was no real explanation to why the school had chosen her, despite closeted reasons being hinted at. If there are secrets to be kept, why recruit a young independent thinker who has a high likelihood of attempting to overthrow the whole thing?

Nonetheless, this is a great read for uncovering a mystery. There’s a real creeping dread throughout all of Wynne’s prose, and her cloak and dagger narrative was very well executed. A really disconcerting idea that all is not as it seems in boarding schools, or indeed, anywhere.

This was an ambitious and interesting idea for a book, I did think the author could have gone further though and really tested Rose with even more extraordinary and abominable lessons for the girls!
It was a bit of a slow-burn and took a little too long for Rose to realise what was going on - especially as the reader knew long before she did! So that was a little frustrating. Plus the narration was a little uneven, moving from scenes/days quite quickly and sometimes even tenses. Also the setting of the 1990s didn't work for me, it felt far older and could have been set easier in the 50s or 60s maybe?
But I did enjoy it and looked forward to reading every night.

Brilliantly dark.

This is a fantastic read, chilling eerie and atmospheric.

Set in a girls boarding boarding school in Scotland, 26 year old Rose Christie joins the staff as new Classics head of department.

Very clever interweaving of classical tales throughout the story.

I gobbled this book up and I will certainly read anything written by Phoebe Wynne. A great debut.

Oh dear. To begin with, this was quite dark and broody if a little unlikely. By the time I was about two thirds in I was beginning to get a bit fed up with the main protagonist. By three quarters of the way through I thought it became just plain silly. In fact there was one particular scene if I'd not known something about the author, I'd've thought it was written by a frustrated teenage boy. Sorry to be blunt, but this wasn't my cup of tea at all.

This novel's blurb references both The Secret History and Rebecca and I can sort of understand why - it's a novel that contains references and quotes from Greek Classics and in essence is a campus novel (The Secret History) and it has a female protagonist (Rebecca) but beyond that I failed to see much similarity, and I don't think it does the book any favours expecting something to similar to either as I'm fairly sure most readers would be disappointed.

Rose is a teacher of Classics who is unexpectedly appointed as head of department at an elite school for girls - Caldonbrae Hall, elite both in terms of results and in terms of its students, most of whom are from wealthy and established families. The school is a nice creation and is probably the most fully realised thing in the book, you get a sense of it's traditions and how it is run as the story goes on, and it feels mysterious from the outset.

Unfortunately that mystery is pretty thin and for most readers the central mystery/twist will be realised before (perhaps long before) Rose gets there. Whether it's intentional or not, it's signposted and hinted at strongly enough that it's not too hard to work out where the novel is going, or at least where the central mystery is going.

Rose herself is a frustrating character. She shows intelligence and is inquisitive, yet is extremely slow on the uptake for much of the book. She uses female characters from Myth (Medea, Medusa, Agrippina. potted precis of which begin some chapters - which adds some colour) to teach her students about being strong, about being independent and empowered. In a sense to rebel against the dictates of the school, but at key points Rose is weak. She doesn't stand up when she should, she allows herself to be cowed when you would expect her to yell and so the different elements of the character rub up against each other, and tend to be plot serving rather than actually their to give us a full rounder character.

The same is true for most of the novel, it feels like everything that happens, happens only to reach the denouement, so the feminist teachings of Rose serve no purpose but to make the ending work. Similarly the contrivance of Rose being appointed to her position only exists to bring a dissenting voice into the hallowed halls of the school. You could argue that a lot of literature is contrived in this way, and that may be so, but in other hands, I feel that this novel could have been handled in a slightly less jarring more flowing manner, without the sense that things only happen for the sake of the book.

It's a shame because there is some promise here, and the idea is a good one, it just never quite hits what it aims for.

I thought this was an excellent premise and I loved the setting and atmosphere. And I was gripped while reading - although it did feel as if it could have been a little shorter. I did figure out the twists fairly early (except for the final one with Jane) but that didn’t matter since I wanted to see how it would all resolve.

I really enjoyed the inclusion of Classics stories and I loved how they began to impact on some of the girls.

But Rose as a protagonist was frustrating at times - she felt passive and I wanted her to fight more - with her intelligence as well as with her emotion. It was hard to connect with her as a character and I felt held at arm’s length.

Overall though, this is absolutely worth a read - it will prompt opinion and discussion and it is a brilliant concept.

Absolutely brilliant premise and I loved all the mystery behind the school.
It was a really interesting story and had me shocked, disgusted and appalled pretty much the entire time. Particularly when you find out what’s truly going on! I had my suspicions throughout but when they were confirmed and then worsened, wow!

However, a lot of parts also fell flat for and weren’t for me! I didn’t really enjoy the snippets of the Classic stories interspersed. They were interesting but I felt it broke up the book, rather than add to the flow of it.
I also found it very slow and found Rose to be infuriating! In some moments, she seemed very powerful and in others, so docile. I appreciate the situation wasn’t crystal clear but I really wanted her to put up a fight!

Unfortunately I didn't finish this book. It was way too slow and predictable for me. I struggled laboriously to page 200, then realised I still had 200 pages to go. I had other books I wanted to get on and read, and this just wasn't grabbing me. The teacher was so annoying, I can't believe she stayed in her job longer than a month. Any real person would have been totally weirded out and resigned, especially after what happened to her within her first 2 weeks of the term.

The idea of the story was great - that's why I requested it. The reality was disappointing.