Lucy is a married mother of two who finds out her husband Jake has cheated on her with an older woman. Distraught, they agree that Lucy can cause harm to Jake three times, whenever she wishes, without retaliation, to make up for the infidelity. Yeah, this marriage will go the distance…
The premise intrigued me as did the harpy angle - I thought it’d be this interesting modern dark fairy tale - but unfortunately it turned out to be a very dull story with some trite allusions to harpies scattered through mundane scenes of domestic strife.
The premise of Lucy harming Jake doesn’t develop beyond the surface and I came to view it for what it is: astoopid. I mean, is their marriage meant to be “fixed” after the husband has domestic violence enacted on him multiple times? Of course not - there’s no path to happiness for them there! They’re a horrible couple who are obviously unhappy and shouldn’t be together. The answer shouldn’t be violence but a tacit understanding that their marriage is over and they’ll see other people and decide whether to continue to live together for the kids’ sake or not.
That’s only a small part of the book though - most of it is Lucy rambling on about the stresses of motherhood and being dissatisfied with her work. It ain’t gripping reading and she doesn’t say anything remarkable about either. And then there’s the wishy-washy ending
SPOILER
where she goes into a cop-out trance state with some vague rubbish about being raped and witnessing domestic violence in her own parents which, I guess, are meant to excuse/explain her shitty behaviour towards her husband.
END SPOILER
It’s an attempt by the writer to go for an arty ending but it feels like she simply didn’t know how to end her crap story and the overall impression is very unsatisfying.
Megan Hunter’s The Harpy is a wasted premise and a boring novel.
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