The book
A JULY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK
A BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2023
A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick
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 butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of “matron.” Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron 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—an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.
Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick’s bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.
The author
K Patrick
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 Fiction Prize for their short story “Eggs”. In 2020, they were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. Mrs. S is their debut novel.
Press
- Jul 20 2023
“Some of the best writing about infatuation and obsession I've come across.”
— The Rumpus - Jul 11 2023
“A sly rewriting of Charlotte Brontë's boarding-school romances.”
— The New Yorker - Jul 10 2023
“[Mrs. S] marks the author out as a distinctive new talent.”
— The Observer - Jun 28 2023
“Poetic.”
— Chicago Review of Books - Jun 20 2023
“Powerful and confident.”
— The New York Times Book Review - Jun 7 2023
“Wonderfully lascivious.”
— The White Review