Book of the Month: Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

We are cawing with excitement to be able to offer five copies of Heather Parry's hotly anticipated new novel Carrion Crow in our April Book of the Month competition, courtesy of our friends at Doubleday.

Not for the faint of heart, this powerful and spine-tingling gothic tale explores mother-daughter relationships, sexuality and class.

To be in with a chance of winning, answer the question at the bottom of this page by midnight on 30 April.

All entrants must reside in the UK and full terms and conditions apply. Check out our competitions page to find more giveaways.

About Carrion Crow

Marguerite Périgord is locked in the attic of her family home, a towering Chelsea house overlooking the stinking Thames.

For company she has a sewing machine, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and a carrion crow who has come to nest in the rafters. Restless, she spends her waning energies on the fascinations of her own body, memorising Mrs Beeton’s advice and longing for her life outside.

Cécile Périgord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good.

Cécile is concerned that Marguerite’s engagement to a much older, near-penniless solicitor, will drag the family name – her husband’s name, that is – into disrepute. And for Cécile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won’t do.

Cécile’s life has taught her that no matter how high a woman climbs she can just as readily fall.

Of course, both have their secrets, intentions and histories to hide. As Marguerite’s patience turns into rage, the boundaries of her mind and body start to fray.

And neither woman can recognise what the other is becoming.

Interview with Heather Parry

How did you first get into writing? 

When I was a teenager I really wanted to be Lester Bangs, a 70s music critic infamous for his semi-imagined interviews with Lou Reed; there were obvious issues with me becoming him but I tried my hand at music journalism nonetheless, at college and university and then when I moved abroad. I loved it, but it wasn’t until my late 20s that I admitted to myself I really wanted to be a novelist – mostly because I was terrified of it. I’d never taken a creative writing class, never known anyone who was a writer, and I hadn’t even been reading much for the previous few years.

I was living in Central America when I decided to try writing a novel and I sat on my building’s roof every morning for a month, getting a few thousand words down each day. I moved to Scotland later that year, in 2014, very aware that I needed to do a lot of work if I ever wanted to improve my work; I got a mentorship with Kirsty Logan while living in Edinburgh and my serious approach to writing started there.  

What can readers expect from Carrion Crow? 

They can expect a dark exploration of a mother-daughter relationship, a discussion of class, queerness and colonialism, a deep appreciation for the gothic genre and an enormous dive into Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management, the Victorian women’s manual that sold over two million copies in its first few years and remains in print to this day. And they can expect a LOT of food, though not as they know it. Anyone who has read my first novel, Orpheus Builds a Girl, knows that the physical landscape of the body is a favourite playground of mine when it comes to stories: this is also the case for Carrion Crow, but in a very different way. 

Which books have inspired you along the way to writing this novel?

My protagonist, Marguerite, has been locked in the attic of the family home by her mother, Cécile – so it won’t come as any surprised that I was influenced by Jane Eyre on that front, as well as The Yellow Wallpaper. In general, the gothic runs through Carrion Crow like sweet letters through seasick rock. But Marguerite also has a friend in the attic, a carrion crow who makes a nest in the rafters, and on this front I was inspired by Patrick Suskind’s The Pigeon, a novel about a man who is menaced by a pigeon roosting in his apartment’s front door, eventually leading to his having an existential crisis. The biggest inspiration of all, though, was the Book of Household Management itself, which functions in the novel as a character in its own right, as well as a symbol of what poor Marguerite, and so many women like her, are expected to become.