What do you do when a single phone call beings to unravel your carefully performed life? What do you do when chaos and pain come to the forefront? How do you keep going when your normal has been so disrupted? In The Harpy Lucy finds a way, but it may lead to more unravelling. Thanks to Grove Atlantic and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. My apologies for the delay in reviewing

I'm not so low-key obsessed with women coming apart in literature. There is something fascinating to me about a life falling apart and something new rising in its place. I think this was at the root of my obsession with witches when I was a child and now it has expanded into my academic research as well. In my research I look at how anger and monstrosity go hand in hand in the depiction of female characters in medieval literature, and so whenever I encounter something similar in modern fiction I dive in. I recently had that experience with Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder, a novel that blew my mind. In The Harpy, which came out earlier, I found a similar kind of unravelling woman who turns to the mythical and animalistic to regain a sense of self. While much shorter than Nightbitch, The Harpy does manage to pack a similar punch. The expectations of motherhood and a married life, the self-doubt these introduce, the violence of intimacy, they all come to the fore as Lucy questions herself and her life. While I am happily single and childless at the moment, I nonetheless find these explorations fascinating because I can't help but wonder about them as well. Motherhood and marriage don't have to be constricting and confining things, but they can turn into that, either by outside force or from internal fears. I'm so glad female authors are exploring this and taking it as far as they are, because these books form a kind of release. While not everyone will need that release, some of us do.

Lucy and Jake are your normal, everyday couple. Happily married, two kids, a rented house in a well-to-do neighbourhood. She has halted her career and her dreams of becoming a writer to raise her kids and finds a certain kind of fulfillment in the life she has. Until a single voicemail shatters that life. How can she forgive Jake, when he has hurt her so much? The answer is, hurt him in return. The Harpy tells the tale of Lucy's three opportunities to hurt him, interspersed with ruminations on her obsession with the classical figure of the harpy. These little sections on the harpy were fascinating, as Hunter brings together ideas about revenge, hurt, anger, and the performance of motherhood and womanhood, all while telling the story of Lucy's thinking. I go into the structure of the book a little more below, but I very much enjoyed it. Lucy is not necessarily a likeable character in the traditional way. She makes some strong choices, she spirals, she is messy, but for that I adore her. Jake and the kids are, in a way, utterly secondary to the novel and to the reader because we only really see how they impact Lucy or how she feels about them. If this were different, if they were more fully realised for the reader, The Harpy would be a different book. Its focus on Lucy is a strong point and I wouldn't have exchanged that for more on the other characters.

I haven't read Megan Hunter's first book, The End We Start From, although I have been wanting to for quite some time. In a way, perhaps, The Harpy was a great introduction to her writing style. Hunter's writing in this novel is incredibly poetic and lyrical and I found myself really gripped almost from the beginning. Structure-wise, Hunter has also set up The Harpy in a really interesting way. If we think of the novel as a play with three acts, something I am very fond of doing despite the medium-bending (sue me!), then The Harpy begins with a glimpse of the end of the second act, before everything goes properly dramatic. From that glimpse, we move back to the first act and get to know Lucy, and through her Jake and their two sons. Having had this little glimpse, there is a kind of 'how will we get there? what is coming next?' suspense which keeps the tension consistent. The third act reads like a full-on unravelling which was so frantic by design that I was almost breathless reading it. I think The Harpy will be fascinating on my second read because the propulsiveness of finding out what will happen has lessened enough for me to pick up on more of the details and beautiful language Hunter sprinkles throughout her narrative.

The Harpy is a fascinating novella of a woman unravelling and finding something of herself in the process. For those who picked up Nightbitch, this is absolutely your kind of read!

It says that I need to review this book, but it is not on my kindle. I read the book on Hoopla and will review it on Netgalley. Thank you to Grove Atlantic for approving my request.

This book was much more than I'd anticipated. I went in thinking I'd just get a revenge story, but what I took away from "The Harpy" is how one woman can go through a range of emotions and explain/compare them from her childhood. As the story progresses it gets pretty dark. The flashbacks to Lucy's childhood, her honest feelings about motherhood and her children, how she related in the world and with others were all very insightful. I would say this book has depth. Either you will thoroughly enjoy it or completely dislike it and I can understand why either way.

Lucy's strong emotions made sense to me (she may be insane or a morphed harpy) and enjoyed my time in her head.

Didn't capture my attention and engagement. Interested in trying it again though and hopefully it will take.

Lucy and Jake come to a pivotal point when his infidelity compromises their marriage. Broken and distraught Lucy is allowed to ‘hurt ‘ him three times in retribution. Firstly, this is a dark lyrical read and not your domestic noir or revenge novel. I kept reading as the prose was beautiful and haunting. Although Lucy is not particularly a feminist icon,I empathized with her. The ending was a complete surprise.

This one had a great premise - I love a woman who has been pushed to the side because of her sex a la Katherine in Taming of the Shrew. Ultimately, it didn't deliver for me.

I really liked the dark atmosphere and the lovely writing of this book. It's a first-hand look into the mind of a woman who finds out her husband cheated on her.

He agrees to allow her to hurt him 3 times to atone for the hurt he caused her. Let the dark spiral ensue.

Lucy isn't a particularly likeable character, but her situation lends itself to empathy, despite this.

I liked the harpy as a symbol of feminist power throughout the book, bit although the ending tried to bring it all together, it didn't quite work for me.

Overall, this book takes the mundane, and shines a mythical slant of light on it.

I've been reading a lot of books with angry women as the main character recently and while that has been pretty enjoyable thus far, I'm sad to write that The Harpy wasn't all that I hoped for it to be.

This book has so much promise. We have a woman whose husband cheated on her with someone unexpected. A woman who finds herself being offered by said husband three chances to hurt him in order to balance out the wrongs and mend their relationship. A woman who begins to see the parallels between her parents turbulent relationship and hers. This woman is Lucy and while both her husband and her have expected pain to come when she hurts him thrice, they hadn't anticipated the other effects: Jake, the husband, believing that these three hurts will make everything normal again, only that it doesn't. And, Lucy, whose slumbering harpy is awakening.

The above sounds so amazing that I just had to read The Harpy. Unfortunately, now that I'm done, I have to agree with the other reviewers that the book is as confused as its main character on the themes and message that it wants to deliver. Perhaps the way feminism and misogyny is explored is intended to show the conflict between choosing one or the other since misogyny is pretty much ingrained since birth and it can be difficult to shed it entirely in favor for feminism. However, as this is a book and considering how the harpy is viewed as a feminist symbol, I had expected at least for Lucy to form more firm and feminist opinions as she metamorphoses. Instead, neither the feminist side nor the misogynist side are greater than the other, resulting in Lucy's gradual metamorphosis having a weak impact, and the unclear direction the book is heading towards.

Moreover, I feel that the ending suffered due to the weak impact of Lucy's metamorphosis into a harpy. I normally love ambiguous endings like the one here, but this time it was just unsuitable because it's just...there—a clever ending without any emotional depth.

All in all, The Harpy is a clever book with brilliant foundations, but the execution is sadly lacking at some aspects. The writing is gripping and the imagery woven creates the perfect atmosphere for it, but without the clear direction and message, the book falls short.

I had been really interested in the premise of this novel and was obviously drawn to the gorgeous front cover. The novel centres around two characters, Lucy and Jake, a middle-class couple raising two young boys. Lucy is a stay-at-home mum whilst Jake is the breadwinner of the family. We very quickly learn that Jake is having an affair with a colleague and at work and from this point things begin to unravel very quickly.
Lucy and Jake agree that she should be given three moments or opportunities to seek revenge on her husband, to hurt him in return for his offense. Interspersed with this is an even darker narrative from the perspective of the Harpy, the being that Lucy is spiralling into. The darkness of the novel is punctuated by moments of brief comedy. At one point, Lucy states ‘children’s party, like a death, is never real until it’s happening.’ She is consumed and lost in her role as a mother. Her identity and sense of self has been replaced.
Exploration of female rage and anger is an interesting one. Lucy herself admits her anger, ‘There is a trail of anger flowing through my bloodline, from my great-grandmother…to me’ and I thought the idea of anger being passed down the female line an interesting one. I had recently read Lisa Taddeo’s ‘Animal’ which explores the same concept in relation to societal attitudes towards women creating this anger however I did feel on occasion that ‘The Harpy’ slipped potentially into a demonised stereotype of the wronged female. The only way for a woman wronged is to step into the role of a man hater and become deranged. However, in saying that, it was clear that Lucy was a traumatised character who we learn has had a troubled past and is overcome with the burden of guilt that the reader can intuitively feel is not her fault. Her complex psychology is troubling, and I felt empathy with the character that the author has drawn. I was appreciative of the fact that Jake remained in the background and was hardly visible to me as a reader, in turn foregrounding the importance of Lucy’s concerns and troubles.
I did find the book heavy and quite bleak. Lucy is irrevocably changed in her role as a mother, ‘my sight is still coloured, infused by blood we shared, by their journeys through my lightless body.’ This change feels largely a negative one and left me considering if there was any hope in the text at all. It is certainly a book I will continue to ponder for a long time.

I really don't know how to rate this... It is not something that I usually enjoy, but I pretty much liked it until about 80%, and then it all went down.

Lucy is a middle-class bored wife and mother of two who is bored with her life. She then discovers that her husband is a cheating bastard, and instead of kicking his sorry ass, she decides to go and have a mental breakdown.

I liked a good few parts of the book, I even made a few highlights on the side, which I almost NEVER do, and I quickly got used to the writing style that seemed so pretentious and wanna-be-poetic at first.

I also enjoyed the connection between Lucy and the Harpy almost until the end. But the ending was really anticlimactic and I was just angry that yet another woman lost her mind to her boring middle-class life and a cheating husband.

If I'm honest, the cover made me read the book, though it seems to be lost on me why these are the wings of a swan. I never imagined harpy to have such soft, white, fluffy wings.

This is a dark examination of a woman faced with the infidelity of her husband, and it is fascinating. Megan Hunter writes beautifully and fully immerses you into the psyche of Lucy, the wife and mother who must deal with the betrayal. I loved the references to harpies from mythology in this book, both for references to how harpies "punish men" and as the left-behind work of a woman who gave up her dreams when trying to balance motherhood. This is a book that will stay with you long after reading it.

The poetic writing style never sits well with me and the whole dark story of cheating and abuse had a kind of a bad taste that I don't really enjoy. I didn't hate it though, and I liked it more than I usually would like this kind of "oh so sad" middle-class bored women stories.

The Harpy starts out as a story about infidelity. I specify that it starts out that way because it transforms into something totally different and honestly, I think this book has little to do with that. To me, this book was about motherhood: potentially losing your sense of self when you become a mother, the way you must succumb to the roles of a housewife to the people around you, and most of all, trying to break the cycle of how your own mother lived before you.

I’m not a mother and yet I resonated with these parts because as a woman you’re almost being trained to live this way your whole life. I loved how subtle this underlying background story was being unfolded, as a reader it challenges you into trying to see the way not only Lucy thinks but also how the parental figures in her childhood thought. Some of these habits and prospectives on life have been engrained in your mind through generations, being trained in you since childhood. It’s up to you to break the cycle.

This was an incredibly unique read. The thing I loved about this novel is that it is up to each readers’ interpretation. The parts that you pay attention to or resonate with is going to be what you think it is about. At just under 200 pages, it is jammed packed with beautiful prose, detailed introspection and heart racing thrills. It gave me very much Black Swan vibes, but with a domestic twist. Definitely recommend this if you’re looking for a darker or deeper read.

At one moment you may think that life is perfect and then in the next moment everything changes. Do you try to retaliate? And become the harpy? This book was beautifully written with interesting characters
Many thanks to Grove Atlantic and to NetGalley for providing me with a galley in exchange for my honest opinion.

I like everything Megan Hunter is trying to do, but I'm not sure I love the overall execution. May just be a personal preference kinda thing. This was still interesting, for certain, but I don't think it will stick with me all that much, which I found happening with her book, [book:The End We Start From|33858905], too.

I enjoyed this book. The main character had great depth and the way the author present them was very well done.

The ending was a let down for me, it fell flat.

I wouldn’t say this book is my usual read but I did find it interesting.

"The harpy has never had children, it seems. Has never bought or rented a house, chosen cushion covers or selected a carpet from a choice of thousands.

She can sleep on the wing, her own body her refuge, her nails curled, ready to strike."

What a powerful, visceral read. I had high expectations based on the description, and my, did the book deliver!

Using the mythological image of the harpy, the author thoroughly explores the themes of marriage, motherhood, and individuality. The first-person narrator is Lucy, a mother-of-two in her thirties who receives a life-changing phone call that informs her that her husband had an affair with an older colleague. To the tune of the oven heating up to swallow up the chicken she had planned for dinner, her sons munching on after-school sandwiches, the television they’re glued to, something clicks in an otherwise unremarkable woman. A creature she has known and identified with all her life, a fascination that lay dormant slowly starts to awaken, a stir of wings, a click of talons: the harpy opens its eyes.

The language mastery displayed by Hunter frequently had me flipping back to reabsorb her words over and over again. She has a keen eye for detail and nuance, as well as a knack for bringing out the extraordinary in the mundane. Adultery is by no means an underexplored topic in literature, and neither is mythology, and neither is revenge, but the way this story is told is spellbinding because of the intensity of the language. The sentences somehow manage to engage all senses in a delicious synesthetic recipe that left me both deeply satisfied and hungry for more at the same time. I almost never say this, but I’d love to return to this book to scoop out even more sensations and food for thought.

Another strength of the writing is the balance between revealing only what is necessary to tell the story and provoking the appropriate emotional and intellectual response in the reader.

At first, I had somewhat mixed feelings about the ending, but in light of everything that led to it (and the twist in the bedroom really caught me by surprise and had me interrupt my inhaling of the book to loudly gasp!), I can only imagine Gayle Waters Waters saying “What would YOU have done?”

"The Harpy" is definitely one of my literary highlights of the year, an unforgettable tour-de-force of stark, believable humanity.

I love retellings, I love magical realism, but this ain't it. Lucy gets a phone call and learns her husband is having an affair. To stay together, he promises her she can hurt him three times in whatever ways she wants. Unfortunately, Lucy isn't very likeable, and the ending didn't make a ton of sense.

3.75/5 stars.
I really enjoyed this one although I can completely understand why some people wouldn’t.
But I loved the references to harpies in between chapters and the dark side to the main character.
I wasn’t sold on the ending though which is what downgraded this from a four star read.

It is not new to examine the hardships of marriage, of motherhood, of infidelity, or — these days — of female anger. And I am so here for it.

And, damn, this is a pretty great example. Lucy is angry. Lucy is profoundly angry and profoundly traumatized by a multitude of things and when the dam of her rage and sorrow starts to break it is a breathtaking deluge.

This is more <I>The Pisces</I> than it is <I>Salt Slow</I> and yeah, I wish it was the other way around… But I still loved this. The million tiny pressures and slights and cuts that Lucy experiences and just keeps trying to gloss over until she can’t until every breaks… it just felt so real and so gutting. The metaphor of the harpy. It goes places I didn’t entirely expect and whether that’s a pro or con is debatable (<I>yes, this is me being petty and alluding to the fact that I’m not satisfied with the ending. Thank you for noticing.</I>, but I still give mad props to Harper for this vicious little novel.

The prose is as sharp as harpy talons and just as foreboding. I want to revisit this catharsis every bad day I have for the next forever, it’s that good.

My thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for an advanced reader copy in exchange for an honest review.

The premise of this book is that a wife discovers her husband is cheating on her. In order to reconcile they come to an agreement that she can hurt him three times, three different ways all on her own terms and timing in retaliation. It has some lyrical beautiful prose describing her own obsession with the mythological creature the Harpy. Not your typical infidelity story. Left me thinking.