From the acclaimed author of Mrs. March comes the riveting tale of a bloodthirsty governess who learns the true meaning of vengeance.
Cannibalism, child death, animal death.
Grim Wolds, England: Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House prepared to play the perfect governess—she’ll dutifully tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, and only joke about eating children. But long, listless days spent within the estate’s dreary confines come with an intimate knowledge of the perversions and pathetic preoccupations of the Pounds family—Mr. Pounds can’t keep his eyes off Winifred’s chest, and Mrs. Pounds takes a sickly pleasure in punishing Winifred for her husband’s wandering gaze. Compounded with her disdain for the entitled Pounds children, Winifred finds herself struggling at every turn to stifle the violent compulsions of her past. French tutoring and needlework are one way to pass the time, as is admiring the ugly portraits in the gallery… and creeping across the moonlit lawns…
Patience. Winifred must have patience, for Christmas is coming, and she has very special gifts planned for the dear souls of Ensor House. Brimming with sardonic wit and culminating in a shocking conclusion, Victorian Psycho plunges readers into the chilling mind of an iconic new literary psychopath.
Don't just take our word for it...
“Vandalism and lechery are among the milder affronts that occur on Winifred’s watch, and her narration, though sombre, sparkles. ‘It fascinates me,’ Winifred reflects, ‘that humans have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but for the most part, choose not to.”
– New Yorker, “Best Books of the Year”
“[Victorian Psycho] lives up to its literary namesakes, delivering unrelenting gore and shock in the vein of those earlier novels by Bret Easton Ellis and Robert Bloch…. Feito’s 2021 debut novel, Mrs. March, revealed her skill for eking out dread and terror from the mundane life of a woman past her prime…. What’s consistent between the books is Feito’s macabre sense of humor. [Feito] has moved on from the pitiably self-conscious Mrs. March to the defiant, hallucinatory confidence of Winifred Notty: both deliciously unlikable in their own ways, both a pleasure to root for in their misguided travails.”
– Jac Jemc, New York Times Book Review
“A murderous woman dropped into a gothic novel is a recipe for delightfully disturbing and grimly comedic bloodshed . . . Fans of gothic literature who don’t mind gruesome deaths will savor watching Winifred go beyond simply eating the rich in this seemingly by-the-book gothic story that subverts some of the genre’s conventions.”
– Library Journal, starred review 🌟
Taste the very first page
Ensor House sits on a stretch of moorland, all raised brows and double chin, like a clasp-handed banker about to deliver terrible news.
I meet its mullioned eyes from the open phaeton, rolling across the moor to my destiny, my breasts jiggling in my corset.
‘That there’s Ensor House, there,’ says the driver beside me, jabbing his jaw at it. He is one of Mr Pounds’ servants, dispatched to Grim Wolds Station to transport the new governess to the house.
My gaze falls to the horse’s velvet haunches before me, then to the driver, his cheeks pitted with smallpox scars, his large drooping nose bulging like a goitre. We’ve only just met, but I can already sense a decadently slow mind behind his vacant eyes. His mouth hangs half-open, housing a single protruding tooth.
‘Do you know the masters well?’ I venture to ask him.
‘Eh.’
I am unsure of what this means, so I press on. ‘What are they like?’
He says, simply: ‘I’ve ’ad worse.’
It is a promising start. The muscles behind my face move…
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