Carrion Crow

An enlightening and spine-tingling tale that explores mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, class, rampant Victorian colonialism and bodily freedoms. A powerful and spine-tingling gothic tale exploring mother-daughter relationships, sexuality, and class. There are some facts about the world that only your mother can teach you. Marguerite had been confined for the sake of her wellbeing. That's what her mother had said. Marguerite Perigord 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 her life outside. Cecile Perigord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good. Cecile 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 Cecile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won't do. Cecile'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. And neither woman can recognise what the other is becoming.

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.

Review :
Carrion Crow, surely, will win awards . . . Every sentence oozes a crushed purple poetry, overripe with devastation and wretchedness . . . If you finish it feeling you might just skip dinner, then you also feel filled with awe for a writer so gifted at conveying this much ick in such luxuriant, refulgent style. Nods to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper and, more obliquely, to the mythic grotesquerie of Angela Carter’s early fiction. Carrion Crow may be set in a fetid late Victorian London and couched in lightly brocaded prose, but what lurks within is unmistakably red in tooth and claw, a creature nearer in kinship to Kathy Acker than to Sarah Waters . . richly fecund and adult in every sense of the word. Carrion Crow is a worthy entrant into the contemporary gothic hall of fame . . . I’m not sure the pure rancidness of this book will ever totally leave me. Haunting and vivid, creating that palpable sense of isolation so hard to create. Parry's atmospheric storytelling leaps off the page. Probably one of the best books I've read this year! It felt like an unholy mix of Ottessa Moshfegh and Leonora Carrington, whilst still being very much its own thing. By turns grotesque and painfully tender, Carrion Crow is a masterful novel by a writer in complete control. Seldom have I read so compulsively or been so keen for a book not to end. It is a novel of achy compassion and consummate nastiness and I loved it. Grizzly, compelling, and utterly claustrophobic. A surreal and abject little monster of a novel, artful in its exploration of women’s unspoken and unfulfilled ambitions, and the transformations they make to try and achieve them. If you’re on the lookout for a gothic masterpiece, look no further than Carrion Crow ... a thought-provoking and bold exploration of a toxic mother/daughter relationship set against a darkly gothic backdrop, which shines a light on societal constraints of the time and deals with the expectations laid at the feet of women. A brilliantly claustrophobic tale of confinement . . . a cautionary tale of the societal pressures that have left so many women unfulfilled and overwhelmed.