Review: The Harpy by Megan Hunter

Lucy’s world is rooted in her home and her family. A wife and mother of two young boys, hers is world of repetition, duty, and care. So, when she receives a call telling her that her husband is cheating on her with a colleague, her carefully crafted bubble bursts, and her life is turned upside down. However, there is a glimmer of hope. In an attempt to save their marriage, Lucy is granted permission to hurt her husband, three times.

As the couple begins their journey along the road to healing, Lucy cannot help but reflect on her marriage and herself, as she is slowly taken over by a desire to hurt the man she loves most in the world. As the months creep by and three strikes are delivered, she feels herself becoming unmoored, and her mind and body transforming into something bitter and sinister, fuelled by dark desires and stark realisations.

The Harpy is nothing short of a revelation. The writing is so emotional and persuasive that you feel yourself being sucked into a dark cloud, becoming feral and enraged along with the narrator. To read anything by Megan Hunter is to be drawn directly into her mind’s eye, to be given a new perspective of the seemingly mundane. Hunter’s mastery of prose is so impressive that small snippets will flit across your mind when least expected, creating a vivid second world that hides in the shadows of your own. Hunter seems to weave a spell through each penned word, snaring the reader, and shrouding us in a cocoon of wild thoughts and unchecked actions.

Megan Hunter makes me pity authors who’ve yet to develop a signature style, and her prose is so unsettling it has a nightmarish quality of the eerily unreal – I cannot give higher praise for her ability to create something astonishing out of a handful of letters. Each sentence is a gift, a flower which blooms when read. So please, read them.

The Harpy by Megan Hunter is published by Picador, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.