The Harpy

“The Harpy asks its readers to consider whether emotional violence can be uncoupled from its physical counterpart, & whether one can justify the other. By blurring the boundaries of the two — a mild poisoning & revenge pornography occupy the same textual category of harm — the novel sketches out the unsettling psychological terrain that can lie beneath bourgeois marital composure.” — Guardian (UK)

Lucy & Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, & to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, Jake.

The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy & Jake decide to stay together, but make a special arrangement designed to even the score & save their marriage—she will hurt him three times.

As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime & punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind & body from which there is no return.

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

Part revenge tale, part fairy tale, The Harpy is an electrifying story of marriage, infidelity, & power by the author of the #1 Indie Next Pick The End We Start From, Megan Hunter

Megan Hunter’s first novel, The End We Start From, was published in 2017 in the UK, US, & Canada, & has been translated into 8 languages. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Books Are My Bag Awards & longlisted for the Aspen Words Prize, was a Barnes & Noble Discover Awards finalist, & won the Foreword Reviews Editor’s Choice Award.