The Harpy

By (author) Hunter Megan
Short description/annotation
From the acclaimed author of The End We Start From, The Harpy is the story of a marriage, an affair, and a very particular kind of revenge.
Description

‘Brilliant . . . A deeply unsettling, excellent read’ - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under
''A potent contemporary fable . . . riveting'' - Guardian
‘Genuinely thrilling . . . one long beautiful scream’ - Evie Wyld

Lucy lives with her husband Jake and their two boys. Her life is devoted to her children, her days mapped out by their finely tuned routine.

Until a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband. He thought she should know.

Lucy is distraught. She decides to stay with Jake, if only for the children’s sake, but in order to even the score, they agree that she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, or what form it will take. And so begins a delicate game of crime and punishment, from which there is no return . . .

Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy by Megan Hunter is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.

‘Utterly compelling . . . precise and darkly truthful’ Esther Freud

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The Harpy is brilliant. Hunter imbues the everyday with apocalyptic unease. A deeply unsettling, excellent read.
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In The Harpy, Hunter has articulated female rage in a way that lives on in your bones and in your gut. A genuinely thrilling read, one long beautiful scream.
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Megan Hunter’s potent contemporary fable about the enduring taboo of female fury becomes especially relevant. Every bit as riveting as her debut The End We Start From . . . the ensuing drama blends mythic motifs with pointed swipes at modern motherhood’s double binds.
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The Harpy is an almost perfect book. The premise is so simple, and the execution so flawless . . . I''ve talked about it more than anything else I''ve read so far this year: I love explaining the set-up to friends and watching their eyes widen. It''s so dark and so much fun.
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Hunter writes viscerally and incisively about the taboos of female desire and rage . . . [a] striking, pared-down modern myth
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A fiery tale of infidelity . . . she manages to elevate her story to something that is at once rooted in the everyday and effortlessly transcends it . . . a gripping, psychologically astute account of a relationship in free-fall
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Sentence after sentence made my skin bump. Not just with what the sentence said, but because the writing was so very, very good. It''s a brilliant piece of work.
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Utterly compelling . . . so precise and darkly truthful. I thought it succeeding in illuminating - with flair and originality - the damage done by betrayal.
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I was utterly spellbound. Her dark humour and pointillist prose puts her in league with Lydia Davis and Jenny Offil, masterfully rendering the emotional shock of a protagonist finding her life has become story.
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A sharp, timely and darkly funny novel about maternal love and sacrifice, and the incandescent rage that festers beneath it. Hunter''s writing is beautiful and spare, uncanny and hilarious. I utterly loved it.
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A beautifully written, viscerally disturbing novel that tu