Tag: NetGalley

Book Review – Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

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About the Book

Marguerite Périgord is locked in the attic of her family home, a towering Chelsea house overlooking the stinking Thames.

For company she has a sewing machine, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, and a carrion crow who has come to nest in the rafters. Restless, she spends her waning energies on the fascinations of her own body, memorising Mrs. Beeton’s advice and longing for life outside.

Cécile Périgord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good.

Cécile is concerned that Marguerite’s engagement to a much older, near-penniless solicitor, will drag the family name – her husband’s name, that is – into disrepute. And for Cécile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won’t do. Cécile’s life has taught her that no matter how high a woman climbs she can just as readily fall.

Of course, both have their secrets, intentions and histories to hide. As Marguerite’s patience turns into rage, the boundaries of her mind and body start to fray.

Format: Paperback (272 pages) Publisher: Transworld
Publication date: 2nd October 2025 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

In her Acknowledgments, the author describes Carrion Crow as ‘my odd and visceral work’. Well, she’s definitely not wrong there. This is a book which features just about every bodily effusion you can imagine, some real ‘yuck’ moments and physical acts that made me wince. Its real life counterpart is the story of Blanche Monnier, a French socialite who was kept locked in a small room by her mother and brother for 25 years.

Carrion Crow alternates between the story of Marguerite’s physical and mental decline as a result of her confinement and the back story of her mother Cécile.

Initially, Marguerite seems to accept her mother Cécile’s explanation for her confinement, that it is a necessary period of education in preparation for her forthcoming marriage to elderly solicitor, Mr Lewis. Hence her attic room being equipped with a sewing machine and, crucially, a copy of Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management which Marguerite is encouraged to read from cover to cover.

At first it’s the stench of the nearby River Thames that prevails in Marguerite’s attic room but that is gradually replaced by the smell of decay emanating from the room and eventually, I’m sorry to say, from Marguerite herself. Marguerite’s is a solitary existence, if you exclude the lice that infest her body, punctuated only by visits from her mother to bring food, although this is often barely enough to sustain her. Sometimes Cécile brings a letter from Mr Lewis in which he continues to express his desire to marry her and willingness to be patient. As Cécile’s visit become less frequent, Marguerite is forced to resort to other sources of sustenance many of which are too revolting to describe here. When Marguerite discovers a female carrion crow has built a nest in the roof space, she finds solace in it as an example of devoted motherhood not bound by the constraints of society. Marguerite herself longs for a child as part of a carefully thought through plan designed to enable her to achieve true fulfillment.

Cécile’s father built a successful business empire through astute commercial instincts and a singleminded belief that life was about bettering oneself, a trait he sought to instil in his daughter from an early age. As a result the family were wealthy but lacked social standing. Her father’s solution: to marry her to the son of an aristocratic French family, the Périgords. The senior members of the family were not keen on the match but were swayed by the substantial dowry offered by Cécile’s father. The word voracious is insufficient to describe the sexual appetite of Cécile’s husband. For him, nowhere is off limits for sexual congress, as Cécile discovers on the morning of her wedding, and no perversion is to be left unexplored. Nor is privacy a prerequisite, as the household servants learn, and initially Cécile is an enthusiastic participant in this unbridled copulation. When Marguerite, the first of their three children, is born Cécile becomes the picture of a devoted mother. However, everything changes when unwelcome truths are revealed that if made public would bring disgrace. Her situation changes overnight so now everything is a burden and is hers alone to bear. This (sort of) provides an explanation if not a justification for her treatment of Marguerite.

There were quite a few points in the book where I thought to myself, I don’t think I can stomach any more of this, only to find myself unable to stop reading, a testament to the author’s ability to create something that simultaneously repels and compels.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a book like Carrion Crow and I’m not entirely sure I’d want to tackle anything so dark and unsettling again. However, if you’re a fan of body horror in cinematic or literary form, then this book’s combination of those elements with a historical setting might well be for you.

I received a digital review copy via NetGalley.

In three words: Unsettling, atmospheric, intense
Try something similar: The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan

About the Author

Heather Parry is a writer of fiction and nonfiction. Her debut novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, was shortlisted for the Saltire Fiction Book of the Year award and longlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. She is also the author of a short story collection, This Is My Body, Given For You, and a short nonfiction book, Electric Dreams: On Sex Robots and the Failed Promises of Capitalism, and writes the Substack general observations on eggs. She was raised in Rotherham and lives in Glasgow with her partner and their cats, Fidel and Ernesto. (Photo/bio: Goodreads author page)

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Book Review – A Private Man by Stephanie Sy-Quia @picadorbooks

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About the Book

Rome, 1953. David is young, handsome, charismatic and sworn to celibacy. He is freshly ordained, and about to return to England to begin life as a priest. Devotion to God is all he’s ever known.

In London, Margaret is entangled in an impossible love affair. Committed to living on her own terms without sacrificing her faith, she becomes drawn to a women’s movement challenging the archaic rules of the Church.

When their lives are thrown together at a Catholic college in a quiet village, an undeniable connection forms between them. And so begins a story of forbidden love, sacrifice and secrets, with consequences that will reverberate across the generations.

Decades later, she is being cared for by her grandson, who has just discovered the strange truth of his family history.

Format: Hardcover (288 pages) Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 19th February 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

At the funeral of his great-uncle in 2018, Adrian learns something unexpected about his grandparents, namely that his grandfather David was once a Catholic priest. As he begins caring for his elderly grandmother who is suffering from dementia, he tries to draw out the story of his grandparents’ relationship and marriage, revealed in a series of flashbacks. We experience David’s childhood, his time at a seminary in Rome and the ritual of his ordination. It’s a life that seems likely to follow a prescribed path of absolute devotion to the Catholic faith and celibacy.

‘He liked being told what to do. He liked waking up knowing what he had to wear in the morning. He liked the awareness of himself as being in a hierarchy, with people above and below him. He liked all the secret codes and small rituals… He liked his presence being demanded in a particular place at a particular time, and the fact there would be consequences if you didn’t appear.’

It could not be more different from Margaret’s freer, more adventurous life including multiple sexual encounters.

David and Margaret first meet in the 1960s at a theology college where Margaret is a teacher and David the priest. They are both devoted to their Catholic faith but Margaret is not afraid to challenge the Church’s doctrine, specifically relating to the place of women in the Church. What starts as discussion, debate and a sharing of ideas – first in college rooms, then in David’s house – transforms into something much deeper. Before long though the romantic and physical attraction between them cannot be denied, leaving David with an agonising decision. To be with Margaret in the way he desires means leaving the Church. He is left in doubt about the brutality of the process of laicization.

I adored the way the author described the little details of their life together, the gentle give and take that occurs in a long, loving relationship.

‘She thought of the thousand ways they had shown their love to one another, and been unnoticed, else misapprehended. Cups of tea in their multitudes. Crooked inventions of his to ease her in her pastimes. The plank full of nails bent at an angle, for her spools of thread…. Sunday roasts. Drinks mixed and brought to her desk. Records played, and dancing. So much dancing. Long drives, late at night, to fetch one another from this or that place. Jumpers knitted. Quilts stitched, spread over both of their knees on winter evenings. Reading to one another.’

I found Margaret’s decline from the vibrant, articulate woman she once was to someone requiring help with the most intimate of tasks quite heartbreaking. And although I was saddened by how the once passionate relationship between David and Margaret changed over the years, I could also appreciate its realism.

To a certain extent David always remained for me the ‘private man’ of the book’s title. I didn’t feel I got to know him as completely as I did Margaret. However, I could completely understand how David would be attracted to the intelligent, uncompromising, forthright Margaret.

Based on the story of the author’s own grandparents, A Private Man is a tender, moving love story about two people who, despite the obstacles in their way, could not imagine a life without each other.

I received a advance review copy courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley.

In three words: Tender, intimate, moving
Try something similar: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

About the Author

Stephanie Sy-Quia was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize.

Her debut Amnion, published by Granta Poetry in 2021, received a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation; was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio and RSL Ondaatje Prizes; and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award.

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