Mrs S.
Author(s): K Patrick
Powerfully sensual and sublimely stylish, Mrs S is a tale of queer love that smoulders with the heat of summer. In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’. Within this landscape of immense privilege, in which the girls can sense the slightest weakness in those around them, she finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body. That is until she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into Mrs S’s world and their unspoken desire blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both women know that a choice must be made. K Patrick’s portrait of the butch experience is revelatory; exploring the contested terrain of our bodies, our desires and the constraints society places around both. Mrs S marks the arrival of a major new literary talent, unlike any other.
Product Information
'The intense physicality of the novel's emotions and its stylish, stripped-back prose make for an arresting pairing' Observer
'Atmospheric and daring' Guardian
'There's nothing else like it out there' The Times
'Bold and beautiful... Desire crackles through these pages like fire' Telegraph
'Entirely captivating... Patrick's staccato sentences... [become] a secondary language for butchness, powerful and confident' New York Times
'[A] subtle, scintillating novel' TLS
'Brilliant and sexy... It should be on everyone's summer reading list' iNews
'A highly charged tale of desire and obsession' Marie Claire
'A tense, often funny tale of lust and longing... A moving yet non-maudlin reflection on the complexity of gender' Literary Review
'Embraces and then toys with our expectation of the lesbian romance... Spare and direct' London Review of Books
'Bold, uncompromising... Remarkable' Daily Express
'So seductively and intelligently observed that its pulse continues long after the final page' Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
'A languorous slow-burn and a moving reflection on queerness and what it is to be and be seen' Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea
'Moody, generous and brilliant' Jessie Burton, author of The House of Fortune
'Tense, taut and exhilarating' Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually
'Crisp and beautiful' Amy Key, author of Arrangements in Blue
'Hot!' Joanna Walsh, author of Vertigo
'Astonishing' Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
'Beautifully crafted and uncannily accomplished' Rupert Thomson, author of Never Anyone but You
'Taut with anticipation' Lillian Fishman, author of Acts of Service
'Wildly sexy, brave, and so gripping I kept forgetting to exhale; Mrs S is an erotic classic through a bold modern lens' Charlotte Mendelson, author of Wife
Author Biography: K Patrick is a writer based in Glasgow. Their poetry has appeared in Poetry Review and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poetry Prize in 2021, the same year that K was shortlisted for The White Review Story Prize. In 2020, they were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. Mrs S is their debut novel.
General Fields
- :
- : HarperCollins Publishers Limited
- : Harper Element
- : 0.27
- : 31 January 2023
- : 1.9 Centimeters X 13.5 Centimeters X 21.6 Centimeters
- : 01 June 2023
- : books
Special Fields
- : K Patrick
- : Paperback
- : English
- : 823.92
- : 304
- : FA
