Victorian Psycho (2025) by Virginia Feito

 Book Review

Victorian Psycho (2025)

by Virginia Feito

  I swear the E-book edition I checked out from the library managed to inform me that this book was already set to become "a major motion picture featuring Margaret Qualley" which seems almost impossible considering it just got released in the UK and hasn't yet been published over here, but such is the way of publishing rights- they can be sold before the book is even written- a la the Godfather by Mario Puzo which was under contract for a movie before Puzo ever set pen to paper.  Victorian Psycho is pretty much what the title promises, a Victorian-era riff on American Psycho with the nepo baby Investment Banker replaced by a Victorian governess.  What Victorian Psycho sadly lacks is any sort of narrative ambition, we learn, yes, that the Governess has had a difficult upbringing (who didn't, back then?)  The violent bits aren't particularly memorable.   The supporting cast, aka the wealthy family who hires this lady to work with them, are little more than collections of narrative conventions about the Victorians. In short, I was underwhelmed.  I will be interested to see the film.

The Unworthy(2025) by Agustina Bazterrica

 Book Review

The Unworthy (2025)

by Agustina Bazterrica

    I was excited for his novel by Bazterrica, author of the excellent Tender is the Flesh and a slightly less excellent but still very good collection of short stories.  The description had me drooling- promising a tale that combined dystopic lit and religious obsession.  To be fair, Bazterrica does indeed deliver on the promise, but in extremely minimal fashion, at 192 pages The Unworthy is in line with other recent works of literary fiction- short is in, unless it's an extremely long book, but I really wanted more.  The whole deal here is that this one of those books where the protagonist is keeping a journal a la Anne Frank- which, honestly, came to mind more than once while I was reading The Unworthy,  it's a technique that goes hand-in-hand with the development of the novel as an art form- Pamela, by Samuel Richardson, one of the first novels was an epistolary novel.  In that sense, it works that this book is so short, it's hard to imagine this protagonist getting deep into details when she is writing with ink she makes out of mashed up bugs.  Mashed up bugs, in fact, feature prominently, with the girls in the novel subsisting largely on a diet of crickets.  Not ground up cricket protein powder but actual crickets.   Ultimately, I thought The Unworthy was good but it didn't live up to my perhaps unrealistic expectations.