Author(s): Megan Hunter

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From the acclaimed author of The End We Start From, The Harpy is a fierce tale of love, betrayal and revenge.

Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and 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, he wants her to know. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.

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

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

"The Harpy is brilliant. Hunter imbues the everyday with apocalyptic unease. A deeply unsettling, excellent read."Daisy Johnson

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STELLA'S REVIEW: 
A marriage, a betrayal and a punishment. Meet Lucy, wife and mother, mid-30s. She’s put her career on hold for the children — never finished her PhD — and works part-time editing on contract. It fits in with the children. Jake is her charming husband and life is good, even if they can’t afford their own home in the increasingly expensive suburbs. A message from David Holmes breaks the fairytale. Jake’s been having an affair with a work colleague (David’s wife Vanessa). Lucy is understandably shocked and an inner rage starts to build. To save the marriage Lucy and Jake make a deal. She can hurt him three times unexpectedly and without any discussion. Life carries on and the hurts are dealt out. Yet Lucy, despite her best intentions to play her roles, particularly for the boys, becomes incensed by the reactions of her husband, the other parties involved, and the neighbours. As she hosts the neighbourhood pre-Christmas party she becomes increasingly aware of the double standards of her community. Jake is as popular as ever, while she is either maligned or pitied by his actions. This would be another relationship drama about motherhood, wifedom and sacrifice if it wasn’t for Hunter’s superb writing style, which invites you into Lucy’s world in episodic fragments — rich and nuanced — and the mythical fascination that Lucy has with the harpy — that monstrous, powerful bird-woman, a creature she has been curious about since childhood. And her childhood, the impact of parental behaviour, is a pivotal aspect of this novel. Under Lucy’s skin claws a beast, a rage, adamant to be heard and seen. When the punishment crosses the line, her revenge tips out of control. Will she be consumed by her rage or will her rage avenge the wrongs perpetrated upon her? This is brilliant and, like her first book, The End We Start From, the language is pointed, sparse and beautiful — taut and finely tuned. The Harpy is an exploration of love, revenge and female rage, drawing on mythology and the dark recesses of the psyche with precision and spine-chilling unease, set in the normality of the suburban middle-class home.