Victorian Psycho is a fast, wickedly funny, ugly satire of manners, class consciousness, bourgeois boorishness and misogyny. This book鈥檚 range of inflVictorian Psycho is a fast, wickedly funny, ugly satire of manners, class consciousness, bourgeois boorishness and misogyny. This book鈥檚 range of influences is satisfyingly broad. While reading it, I thought of Dickens, Austen, Shirley Jackson, Sylvia Plath, Flannery O鈥� Connor, Patrick Suskind and Emerald Fennell.
It鈥檚 a sharp and funky amuse-bouche of a book, like popping an entire uni nigiri into your mouth, or swallowing an oyster so fresh that it鈥檚 still quivering.
Winifred Notty, the new governess of Ensor House, introduces herself to us like David Copperfield but with a sort of fourth-wall-breaking homicidal glee. Well, not exactly glee, but a matter-of-fact coldness. She has, she tells us, no ability to feel fear, and she thinks perhaps this sets her apart from other people, that it makes her monstrous.
The denizens of Ensor House, seen through the eyes of Winifred, are as harshly funny as old fashioned newspaper caricatures, with silly names like Miss Manners, Mrs. Fancey, Mr. Fishal, Mrs. Pounds. Winifred, herself, is funny. She鈥檚 clever. She鈥檚 terrifying. And she鈥檚 right that all of these people are really the worst, which complicates our task as witnesses to her thoughts and her history, which increasingly reveal themselves as unhinged and murderous. Despite its funniness, the book maintains a steadily growing sense of unease as it careens towards inevitable violence.
It would be wrong to say that I *like* Winifred. But I certainly don鈥檛 like her any less than the rich assholes she鈥檚 surrounded by, doomed by fate and social caste to a life of subservience in a mansion that is full of creepers, bullies, and fools. Winifred鈥檚 bloodlust may be impossible to understand, but her frustration with the limited life imposed upon her by sex and station are very easy to understand. Her sense of betrayal is palpable.
The obvious comparison for Victorian Psycho is to Brett Easton Ellis鈥檚 American Psycho, a book that I mostly abhorred even while I thought it was a clever satire. I wrote a 欧宝娱乐 review of it like 15 years ago or something and I dared to say that I hated reading it, and it鈥檚 funny to me because I still get weekly responses from Men Of The Internet that are mad that I wasn鈥檛 utterly charmed by their favorite little rapefest.
To be clear, I was a lot younger when I read that book and I don鈥檛 think I would have written the same review today. But I still never want to read it again, and I still think that, similar to Fight Club, most of the men who LoOooOoVeD it likely *utterly* missed the point and secretly think Patrick Bateman is a Real Cool Guy with his blood spattered rain slicker and his eggshell business cards, just like they find Tyler Durden aspirational, as they listen to Joe Rogan and shovel protein powder down their gullets.
Victorian Psycho is a perfect, sly literary antidote to American Psycho. A cup of tea laced with arsenic, reframing the Patrick Batemans of patriarchy into the commonplace cartoon chauvinists that they are, and driving fireplace pokers through their runty hearts.
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