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Carrion Crow

Heather Parry

$45

Hardback

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English
Doubleday
27 March 2025
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.
By:  
Imprint:   Doubleday
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 224mm,  Width: 145mm,  Spine: 25mm
Weight:   363g
ISBN:   9781529938685
ISBN 10:   1529938686
Pages:   256
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

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.

Reviews for Carrion Crow

Sublime, wretched, harrowing, glorious. * Kirsty Logan * Carrion Crow is a book to marvel at. Beautifully written with such dark, claustrophobic precision, exploring the devastating control we assert upon one another. Such an achievement. * Rachelle Atalla, author of The Pharmacist * One of the most important new voices in fiction, with Carrion Crow Heather Parry deduces an unutterable Gothic horror of class and gender from the pages of Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management. A festering Edwardian nightmare dressed in exquisitely tailored language, Parry’s vision is magnificent and devastating. * Alan Moore, author of Watchmen * Carrion Crow picks at the scabs of class, sexual liberty and body autonomy in Victorian London and chews them over with grotesque attention to detail. Sharp, claustrophobic and undeniably gross, it revels in the repulsive and positions Heather Parry as both a punk Sarah Waters and the baddest bitch in the business. I can’t wait to see this strange bird fly to dizzying heights. * Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller * Carrion Crow is a rancid work of genius about the depths to which the world will go to rid women of their “unnatural desires”. This novel makes the walls close in and the body an oozing font of horror, and I fell in love with its wild beating crow heart. Heather Parry is a disgusting mastermind and I’d read anything she wrote. * Jane Flett, author of Freakslaw * Both mouthwatering and revolting, a heady poisonous pudding of a book. * Camilla Grudova, author of Children of Paradise * Heather Parry is a literary star of the future. * Kirsty Logan *


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