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    Mrs S
    Mrs S
    Mrs S
    Audiobook9 hours

    Mrs S

    Written by K Patrick

    Narrated by Nicolette Chin

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    An Observer Best Debut of the Year

    A Granta Best Young British Novelist

    ‘I loved this book’ JULIA ARMFIELD

    ‘Exhilarating’ MONICA HEISEY

    'Astonishing' ANDREA LAWLOR

    'Should be on everyone's summer reading list' iNEWS

    'Scorching … One of our favourite reads' TIME OUT

    A Guardian Essential Summer Read

    A sensual debut novel of the forbidden love between a young woman and a headmaster’s wife, unfolding across a single a heatwave summer.

    In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a young Australian woman arrives to take up the antiquated role of ‘matron’. There she meets Mrs S, the headmaster’s wife, a woman who is her polar opposite: assured, sophisticated, a paragon of femininity.

    Over the course of a long, restless heatwave, the matron finds herself irresistibly drawn ever closer into the older woman’s world with their unspoken desire blooming into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer begins to fade, both know that a choice must finally be made.

    ‘Desire crackles through these pages like fire’ TELEGRAPH

    ‘Wildly sexy … I kept forgetting to exhale’ CHARLOTTE MENDELSON

    ‘There’s nothing else like it out there’ THE TIMES

    'Compulsively readable … beautiful, brilliant' OBSERVER

    ‘Moody, generous and brilliant’ JESSIE BURTON

    'Rare and thrilling' SARAH WINMAN

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateJun 8, 2023
    ISBN9780008561024
    Author

    K Patrick

    K Patrick is a writer based in Scotland. In 2023, they were named an Observer Best Debut Novelist and were selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists. They were runner up for the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship and were shortlisted for The White Review Short Story Prize. Their poetry has appeared in Poetry Review and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poet’s Prize. Mrs S is their debut novel.

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    Reviews for Mrs S

    3.5/5

    45 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 4/5
      A timeless, atmospheric, and sensual romance novel, Mrs S follows a newly appointed matron and her love affair with the headmaster's wife—a woman twice her age and as graceful and feminine as our main character is awkward and masculine. I adored this novel's prose and setting and truly felt the cloying claustrophobia of the campus alongside the subtle intensity of their relationship. Beautiful, precise, and somewhat haunting, Mrs S is a perfect lesbian literary romance to read in a forgotten cemetery in the sun.
    • 5/5
      Hot and sultry! Amazing reading voice! I Highly recommend it!
    • 3/5
      Not my usual read but always nice to step into the unknown and embrace a story and a situation very unfamiliar to me. An unknown Australian lesbian is working as a matron in an exclusive English boarding school for girls. Mrs S (we only ever know her initial) is the headmistress and oversees the operation of the school helped by Mr S. We very soon become aware of the matron’s sexual orientation as she becomes obsessed with the elegant Mrs S who surprisingly returns this affection. There is an unwritten sense of sexual tension and when ignited explodes in the pages of the book. I felt that these scenes were well expressed and not overtly sexual written in a way that kept the readers attention whilst slowly building to a somewhat predictable climax (no pun intended). Many thanks to netgalley for an advance ARC in exchange for an honest review and that is what I have written.
    • 3/5
      Forbidden love, boarding school, England - should be right up my alley, but I had a very hard time with this book. First, the writing was very irritating: no quotation marks, so the flow was interrupted by stopping to try to figure out who was speaking; and short, terse, but not particularly well -written sentences. It seemed very pretentious, like a new writer trying to be different. Second, there seemed to be no foundation for the passionate affair - our narrator is obsessed with every little detail of the headmaster's wife (Mrs. S), and suddenly Mrs. S reciprocates - no building of dramatic tension, no real character development.
      I'd say don't waste your time trying to make it through.