I must admit I read this in one sitting, pulled along by the mysteries that were slowly unveiled. This is a modern gothic novel—which doesn’t read like a debut novel—with elements of the The Stepford Wives, a satirical thriller written in the early 1970s by Ira Levin in which a young mother suspects the compliant one-dimensional housewives in her suburban neighborhood are robots constructed by their husbands. There are no robots in Madam, but lots of suspense.
Caldonbrae Hall, a girls’ boarding school was built on top of the ruins of an old Scottish castle and rides high above the rocky cliffs. The reviews of the school are always spectacular, and the school purports to graduate women who are ready to serve society—but only the upper crust, naturally. To this exalted place comes Rose Christie, a classics teacher just twenty-six years old. She is the first new hire in the school in over ten years. She’s overwhelmed at first, feels inept, and wonders why she was chosen for such a prestigious academy. She also wonders what happened to the woman she replaced.
The school’s polished veneer is founded on a traditional culture that hasn’t changed in the 150 years the institution has existed. Rose, raised by a bra-burning feminist mother and an intellectual father (also a teacher), struggles to balance her middle-class upbringing with the rituals of the upper class school. Eventually, Rose must confront the darkness of Caldonbrae which is slowly revealed (trying to avoid spoilers here) and determine whether or not she can fit in and perpetuate its heinous motives.
I particularly enjoyed the interspersing of the lives of women and goddesses of antiquity such as Medusa, Medea, Diana, and Antigone.
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Madam: A Novel is available for preorder through:
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