It fascinates me, the fact that human have the capacity to mortally wound one another at will, but for the most part, choose not to.
Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House, the familial home of the Pounds family, fully prepared to play the perfect Victorian governess. She’ll tutor her charges, Drusilla and Andrew, tell them bedtime stories, teach them about the French Revolution, and only joke about eating children. But the longer Winifred spends within the estate’s dreary confines dealing with the dreary family, the more trouble she has sticking to her plan and her carefully held self-control.
Whether teaching the children how to care for wounded animals, or making sure that every baby has a chance to thrive, Winifred struggles at every turn to stifle the horrid compulsions of her past until it all comes to a head one Christmas morning.
At eight thirty sharp breakfast is removed, as is my will to live.
Full transparency; I finished this book two days ago and I still don’t know what I actually thought of it. It was like a strange, sick, bloody fever dream. It was one of the strangest books I’ve read in a long time, and I don’t know if I want to read it again, or violently fling it from the house.
Victorian Psycho is, as close as I can come to describing it, a subtle and horrific satirical mashup of Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, and a penny dreadful pulp novel. If Edward Gorey went completely off the deep end and decided to illustrate serial killers, I would say he was the perfect illustrator for this book. No one is likable; not Winifred, not Drusilla, not Andrew, not their parents, not their guests, not their servants. Well, maybe the dog and the horses are likable, but they don’t have much in the way of parts.
And this is bloody, oh so very bloody. If you have any problem with blood, guts, gore, vivid descriptions of eating animals raw, child murder, dismemberment, or decomposing bodies, do not read this book. You have to understand: the main character is a drug-addicted psychopath (who I think got her physical description by way of Belle Gunness, “Butcher of Men”), and they are on par with the horribleness of characters in this book. You will root for everyone to die. You’ll be horrified by how everything tumbles down, but you won’t be the least bit surprised by it.
I may actually pick up Mrs. March, the author’s other work.
The shade is “Mummy Brown.” If mummified Egyptians had known they were fated to be pulverized to produce an umber for such a mediocre painter, they surely would have chosen other burial options.