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The Fate of Mary Rose
'She was dead even before I became aware of her existence...'
A child has been abducted from a sleepy Kent village, her face plastered across the media.
As the crime unleashes a wave of hysteria, the claustrophobic world of Rowan Anderson and his inscrutable wife begins to disintegrate. Consumed by her macabre fixation, Cressida is determined to save their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from Rowan himself.
With caustic wit and pitch-black brilliance, Caroline Blackwood creates a skin-crawling - and utterly compulsive - story of repressed violence, female rage and maternal obsession.
A child has been abducted from a sleepy Kent village, her face plastered across the media.
As the crime unleashes a wave of hysteria, the claustrophobic world of Rowan Anderson and his inscrutable wife begins to disintegrate. Consumed by her macabre fixation, Cressida is determined to save their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from Rowan himself.
With caustic wit and pitch-black brilliance, Caroline Blackwood creates a skin-crawling - and utterly compulsive - story of repressed violence, female rage and maternal obsession.
240 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1981
58 people are currently reading
3484 people want to read
About the author
Caroline Blackwood
16 books182 followerswas a writer, and the eldest child of The 4th Marquess of Dufferin and Ava and the brewery heiress Maureen Guinness.
A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Lady Caroline Blackwood was equally well known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood.
She was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, her parents' London home. She was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at, among other schools, Rockport School (County Down) and Downham (Essex). After a finishing school in Oxford she was presented as a debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House.
A well-known figure in the literary world through her journalism and her novels, Lady Caroline Blackwood was equally well known for her high-profile marriages, first to the artist Lucian Freud, then to the composer Israel Citkowitz and finally to the poet Robert Lowell, who described her as "a mermaid who dines upon the bones of her winded lovers". Her novels are known for their wit and intelligence, and one in particular is scathingly autobiographical in describing her unhappy childhood.
She was born into an Anglo-Irish aristocratic family from Ulster at 4 Hans Crescent in Knightsbridge, her parents' London home. She was, she admitted, "scantily educated" at, among other schools, Rockport School (County Down) and Downham (Essex). After a finishing school in Oxford she was presented as a debutante in 1949 at a ball held at Londonderry House.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 91 reviews
August 28, 2024
A welcome reissue of Caroline Blackwood’s nightmarish novel which falls somewhere between crime and psychological horror. Although this lacks the wit and verve of the earlier Great Granny Webster, its unpredictable plot coupled with Blackwood’s trademark perversity makes for an addictive read. It’s narrated by historian Rowan, a self-centred man unable or unwilling to emotionally commit to the women in his life, including his small daughter. Rowan lives and works in London where he’s engaged in a turbulent affair with glamorous model Gloria. Rowan’s wife, Cressida, and child, Mary Rose, inhabit a countryside cottage which he visits as infrequently as possible; treating mother and daughter with an unfathomable disdain – for reasons later revealed. However, Cressida appears devoted to frail Mary Rose, and remarkably unconcerned by Rowan’s lack of involvement in their everyday lives. But then the sudden disappearance of six-year-old, local girl Maureen Sutton - the same age as Mary Rose - overturns Rowan’s ordered existence in ways he could never have imagined.
Biographers have linked Blackwood’s narrative to the recent loss of her own daughter Natalya. Not implausibly, it’s perfectly possible to trace a connection between Blackwood’s guilt about failings as a mother and perspectives on motherhood in the novel. But what fascinated me was Blackwood’s underlying commentary on English society, and on the impact of media representations of violent crime involving children. Blackwood’s story unfolds in the late 1970s in Beckham, a fictional village in Kent, reminiscent of those outwardly-idyllic spaces associated with Christie’s Miss Marple. Beckham with its bijou houses and manicured village green is under threat, a newly-built council estate looms over its previously unspoiled landscapes. A development that concretises economic upheavals and class conflicts of the time. The fact that Maureen Sutton hails from the estate confirms the suspicions of Beckham’s prosperous, middle-class residents: only a feckless, working-class mother would expose her child to unknown dangers; and only an estate of this kind could harbour a potentially deranged killer.
Blackwood’s depiction of the aftermath of Maureen Sutton’s death mirrors public reactions to real-life crime cases from the infamous Moors murders to the Babes in the Woods killings. The hunt for Maureen, and then for her killer, is widely televised, sparking a sinister, increasingly-frenzied response. Maureen’s photogenic appearance increases her currency, conjuring images of innocence corrupted by evil, fostering a culture of fear centred on so-called ‘stranger danger’ – even though then, as now, children were far more at risk in their own homes. The destructive potential of such cultural anxieties is reflected in Cressida’s ghoulish obsession with the grisly details of Maureen’s case; and subsequent callous treatment of Mary Rose which she justifies as a necessary precaution.
The Fate of Mary Rose was supposedly Caroline Blackwood’s favourite of all her books, the perfect expression of her relentlessly bleak worldview. It’s admirably complex but it can also be disturbingly contradictory and uncomfortable. Much of my discomfort’s tied to Cressida’s characterisation. Physically Cressida closely resembles Blackwood and/or Blackwood’s mother – both were famous society beauties. But she could also pass for one of Hitchcock’s ‘frigid’ blondes, rushed revelations about her past even overlap with Hitchcock’s Marnie. And as with Hitchcock’s blondes, there’s more than a whiff of misogyny in Cressida’s portrayal as suffocating, monstrous mother. Although, to be fair, monstrous women, and not-so-great men, are commonplace in Blackwood’s fiction. Fans of crime fiction may also find the lack of conventional closure frustrating. Flawed but thought-provoking and incredibly distinctive – think Barbara Comyns meets Shirley Jackson meets Celia Fremlin. This new Virago edition comes with an introduction from author Camilla Grudova who's a die-hard Blackwood fan.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Virago for an ARC
Biographers have linked Blackwood’s narrative to the recent loss of her own daughter Natalya. Not implausibly, it’s perfectly possible to trace a connection between Blackwood’s guilt about failings as a mother and perspectives on motherhood in the novel. But what fascinated me was Blackwood’s underlying commentary on English society, and on the impact of media representations of violent crime involving children. Blackwood’s story unfolds in the late 1970s in Beckham, a fictional village in Kent, reminiscent of those outwardly-idyllic spaces associated with Christie’s Miss Marple. Beckham with its bijou houses and manicured village green is under threat, a newly-built council estate looms over its previously unspoiled landscapes. A development that concretises economic upheavals and class conflicts of the time. The fact that Maureen Sutton hails from the estate confirms the suspicions of Beckham’s prosperous, middle-class residents: only a feckless, working-class mother would expose her child to unknown dangers; and only an estate of this kind could harbour a potentially deranged killer.
Blackwood’s depiction of the aftermath of Maureen Sutton’s death mirrors public reactions to real-life crime cases from the infamous Moors murders to the Babes in the Woods killings. The hunt for Maureen, and then for her killer, is widely televised, sparking a sinister, increasingly-frenzied response. Maureen’s photogenic appearance increases her currency, conjuring images of innocence corrupted by evil, fostering a culture of fear centred on so-called ‘stranger danger’ – even though then, as now, children were far more at risk in their own homes. The destructive potential of such cultural anxieties is reflected in Cressida’s ghoulish obsession with the grisly details of Maureen’s case; and subsequent callous treatment of Mary Rose which she justifies as a necessary precaution.
The Fate of Mary Rose was supposedly Caroline Blackwood’s favourite of all her books, the perfect expression of her relentlessly bleak worldview. It’s admirably complex but it can also be disturbingly contradictory and uncomfortable. Much of my discomfort’s tied to Cressida’s characterisation. Physically Cressida closely resembles Blackwood and/or Blackwood’s mother – both were famous society beauties. But she could also pass for one of Hitchcock’s ‘frigid’ blondes, rushed revelations about her past even overlap with Hitchcock’s Marnie. And as with Hitchcock’s blondes, there’s more than a whiff of misogyny in Cressida’s portrayal as suffocating, monstrous mother. Although, to be fair, monstrous women, and not-so-great men, are commonplace in Blackwood’s fiction. Fans of crime fiction may also find the lack of conventional closure frustrating. Flawed but thought-provoking and incredibly distinctive – think Barbara Comyns meets Shirley Jackson meets Celia Fremlin. This new Virago edition comes with an introduction from author Camilla Grudova who's a die-hard Blackwood fan.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Virago for an ARC
November 24, 2024
After loving
Great Granny Webster
earlier this year, I knew I would have to read more Caroline Blackwood, and this recent reissue provided the perfect opportunity. The Fate of Mary Rose is something quite different: it’s a pitch-dark crime novel told from the perspective of Rowan Anderson, a self-absorbed, very unhappily married historian. He despises his meek wife, Cressida, and their feeble daughter Mary Rose; he visits them seldom, and reluctantly. He also has a long-term mistress whom he continually belittles. Despite all this, Blackwood takes us so persuasively into Rowan’s perspective that he begins to seem the most reasonable person in this story. Its focus is the preoccupation Cressida develops with the disappearance of a little girl, Maureen, in the village where she and Mary Rose live. This turns into a fevered obsession; then it spreads to the other women in Rowan’s life. He becomes increasingly desperate to be rid of Cressida, leading to a series of dreadful decisions.
It’s easy to see why this book was chosen for reintroduction to a modern audience. Cressida’s disturbing obsession with Maureen, fed by a relentless media focus on the case, seems to prefigure the recent slew of novels about the relationship between true crime and its audiences. It’s also a neat representation of class anxiety, since Maureen lived on a recently-built, much-reviled council estate near Beckham, the otherwise idyllic village where Cressida and Mary Rose live. (I felt the villagers’ hand-wringing over this, the council estate seen as a ‘breeding ground for squalor, disease and crime’, could have come straight out of a novel published today.) The Fate of Mary Rose doesn’t quite have the rapier wit of Great Granny Webster, and there’s a quite different tone, leaning towards melodrama (not a criticism!). The marketing for this edition compares it to Shirley Jackson, which feels accurate to me. Camilla Grudova’s introduction is also great and provides some intriguing context about Blackwood herself.
It’s easy to see why this book was chosen for reintroduction to a modern audience. Cressida’s disturbing obsession with Maureen, fed by a relentless media focus on the case, seems to prefigure the recent slew of novels about the relationship between true crime and its audiences. It’s also a neat representation of class anxiety, since Maureen lived on a recently-built, much-reviled council estate near Beckham, the otherwise idyllic village where Cressida and Mary Rose live. (I felt the villagers’ hand-wringing over this, the council estate seen as a ‘breeding ground for squalor, disease and crime’, could have come straight out of a novel published today.) The Fate of Mary Rose doesn’t quite have the rapier wit of Great Granny Webster, and there’s a quite different tone, leaning towards melodrama (not a criticism!). The marketing for this edition compares it to Shirley Jackson, which feels accurate to me. Camilla Grudova’s introduction is also great and provides some intriguing context about Blackwood herself.
December 28, 2024
absolute nightmare of a book. horrible central characters, horrible subject matter, horrible ending. i LOVED it
August 14, 2024
I think if you’ve got a surname like Blackwood, you’ve got to write things that are just a bit horrifying.
Initially published in 1981, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE concerns the disappearance of young Maureen Sutton from a sleepy village in Kent, and historian Rowan Anderson, dragged into the hysteria against his will by his eccentric wife Cressida. Soon fixated on the news, Cressida’s unsettling demeanour turns sinister as she sets about protecting their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from her husband.
When you’re putting together a reprint list for publication, an important aspect to consider is why you’ve chosen to reprint the text in question within today’s market: when we designate a book to be a classic, we often do it not only due to the literary value we deem it to have, but due to the cultural value. In short, when we decide a book’s a classic, it’s got to mean something to us today in order to justify it’s continuing presence on shelves. In this regard, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE feels like not only a judicious, but an obvious choice for republication. If you boil the plot down to its very basic elements, it concerns how we engage with crime and its reporting, how boundaries are violated within the intimate nature of news as we receive it, and the paranoia which can be sustained through an unhealthy obsession with dark news; while not in the age of social media, where armchair detectives have more power than ever, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE demonstrates precisely how these are constant features of engagement with crime, and how this paranoid can weasel into environments where most consider themselves safe.
In terms of protagonist, Blackwood does a great job of making Rowan a morally grey unreliable narrator: which is to say that she does a really effective job of making him deeply, deeply irritating. From the very first page, he’s overwhelmingly narcissistic, not only in his skewed priorities, but in how he treats the people around him. His alimony provisions are phrased entirely through how inconvenient they are to him, his disgust towards Cressida is visible from the outset, his affair with the glamourous Gloria is one-sided and selfish, and he is more than happy to place his timid secretary in danger for his own personal comfort. Quite simply, this guy stinks. A common thread throughout, and often demonstrated by Rowan, also concerns a common dominating factor of how patriarchy asserts itself: by similarly asserting that femininity, in all its expressions, is somehow wrong and deviant. Alongside his mocking of Cressida’s performances of domesticity at the outset, he shows abject contempt for the articles Gloria writes (deemed vapid in comparison to his own historical research), and while the women of the village grow increasingly terrified at the prospect of a perverted murderer lurking in plain sight, Rowan implies that this concern towards the prospect of sexual violence is somehow hysterical. Interestingly, there are very few male characters within the novel, and those who do exist are often unspeaking or reduced to named references in dialogue. This in turn gives the impression of a reverse Bechdel Test at work (for those unfamiliar, the Bechdel Test is a hypothetical piece of light media criticism established by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, in which a piece of media passes the test by containing two named female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man): women are the lifeblood of this novel, and so are depictions of female anxieties in the face of male violence.
Consequently, the presence of this unreliable narrator again complicates the plot, but not merely due to his opinions: in the context of the novel, this unreliability extends to his alibis. We establish early on that, in his self-pitying contempt for everyone around him (‘contempt’ is a very good summary for Rowan’s character), Rowan is a drunk who spends much of his time at the local pub in order to avoid spending time with Cressida and Mary Rose, and as such, when Maureen Sutton does go missing, even Rowan himself does not know where he was at the time of the murder: was he in the pub, or doing something entirely different? As the pace continues to meander into foreboding territory - while the book clocks in at scarcely over 200 pages, the slow pacing lets us linger in the seething sense of ominousness we find ourselves in - I found that, by the time of the conclusion, it is possible to know almost less about the characters than I did at the beginning.
THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is a distinctly British story, and nowhere says it more that in the undertones of class which run beneath it like a skeleton. There is a reason why so many famous murder mysteries utilise the British village as their setting, and in many cases it’s because of the expectations people have of these villages. In many cases, especially in the 70’s-80’s in which we can assume the novel is set, these villages have increasingly become communities of the middle-class, especially in the South and with the benefit of proximity to London. Maureen, however, is established to have lived on the newly-built council estate on the outskirts of the village, which Cressida despises due to its being an ‘eyesore’ in comparison. This snobbery knots into the heart of the novel, with subtle references to the ruin of the village, not to mention some less-subtle victim-blaming of Maureen’s parents, assuming that the murder took place due to neglect at the hands of Maureen’s mother, unlike the very middle-class mothers who would never let such a thing happen to their children, and as such this turns into a somewhat (as far as we can get it with Rowan’s narration) intersectional look at not only how communities band together, but how they lash out in the face of terrible circumstances.
While they never meet each other - while alive - Maureen and Mary Rose share a very similar role within the narrative: we know very little about either of them, not only because of Rowan’s disinterest and fixation with himself and himself alone, but because both are devices demonstrating how young female innocence is devoured by male violence. In the case of Maureen, this is very literal: she is brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, and consequently becomes the face of this violence within the novel. However, considering Mary Rose, this loss of innocence is instead mitigated to her through her mother, who begins to fill her with her own paranoia (as we learn, Cressida has had previous negative experience with men, but I won’t detail them here for the sake of spoilers) and forcibly drags Mary Rose into the world of grief inhabited by the Suttons. While Cressida’s paranoia does go overboard on numerous occasions, the change is increasingly sinister due to the fact that, in the beginning, many of her worries are entirely valid: a girl the same age as her daughter has been murdered in their village, and living alone with her while her (useless) husband is away in London, there is no male protector from the equally male violence just outside the front door. Her behaviour is very similar to that which we can see among internet armchair detectives in the face of modern crimes, especially in her obsession. Alongside turning her cottage into a shrine to Maureen, complete with images taken from the newspapers, Cressida visits the crime scene and regales the neighbours with the gruesome details, and even crashes Maureen’s funeral, much to the distress of the Sutton family. At which point does her behaviour turn from maternal concern to outright fixation? While such a question is up to reader interpretation, I imagine it would be difficult for most to pinpoint an exact page number. Above all, both girls exist as tools for Rowan’s own discomfort: Mary Rose as an alien being to himself, whom he cannot separate from Cressida, and Maureen as a demonstration of the contempt he holds for women and girls throughout the novel. In many cases, his research - concerning a famous female scientist and scholar - is a failure for the same reason as his relationships; he simply cannot view the women in his life as individual people, as opposed to figures who serve specific purposes in his life and in relation to him. In many cases, this contempt (take a drink every time I say the word) boils down to a sweeping rendering of the entire novel - does anyone truly care about poor Maureen Sutton, or just the idea of her?
As befitting its subject matter, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is a dark look at just how paranoia can seep into the heart of previously secure communities, and demonstrates a distinctly second-wave division between men and women in the face of male violence against women and girls. In a literary market where female rage and complicated women getting revenge is a demand in new releases, the novel is likely to slot into shelves despite the gap between its initial release and now, and even with this degree of separation, is just as ominous to a 2020s audience as to a 1980s audience: after all, the famous ship the Mary Rose sank before it left the harbour, and the reference doesn’t bode well for Blackwood’s Mary Rose either…
*THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is being published by Virago Press on the 7th of November 2024: remember to support your brick-and-mortar bookshops, particularly indies! Thank you to Virago Press and Little, Brown Books for an eArc in exchange for an honest review.
Initially published in 1981, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE concerns the disappearance of young Maureen Sutton from a sleepy village in Kent, and historian Rowan Anderson, dragged into the hysteria against his will by his eccentric wife Cressida. Soon fixated on the news, Cressida’s unsettling demeanour turns sinister as she sets about protecting their sickly daughter, Mary Rose, from the same fate - and perhaps even from her husband.
When you’re putting together a reprint list for publication, an important aspect to consider is why you’ve chosen to reprint the text in question within today’s market: when we designate a book to be a classic, we often do it not only due to the literary value we deem it to have, but due to the cultural value. In short, when we decide a book’s a classic, it’s got to mean something to us today in order to justify it’s continuing presence on shelves. In this regard, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE feels like not only a judicious, but an obvious choice for republication. If you boil the plot down to its very basic elements, it concerns how we engage with crime and its reporting, how boundaries are violated within the intimate nature of news as we receive it, and the paranoia which can be sustained through an unhealthy obsession with dark news; while not in the age of social media, where armchair detectives have more power than ever, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE demonstrates precisely how these are constant features of engagement with crime, and how this paranoid can weasel into environments where most consider themselves safe.
In terms of protagonist, Blackwood does a great job of making Rowan a morally grey unreliable narrator: which is to say that she does a really effective job of making him deeply, deeply irritating. From the very first page, he’s overwhelmingly narcissistic, not only in his skewed priorities, but in how he treats the people around him. His alimony provisions are phrased entirely through how inconvenient they are to him, his disgust towards Cressida is visible from the outset, his affair with the glamourous Gloria is one-sided and selfish, and he is more than happy to place his timid secretary in danger for his own personal comfort. Quite simply, this guy stinks. A common thread throughout, and often demonstrated by Rowan, also concerns a common dominating factor of how patriarchy asserts itself: by similarly asserting that femininity, in all its expressions, is somehow wrong and deviant. Alongside his mocking of Cressida’s performances of domesticity at the outset, he shows abject contempt for the articles Gloria writes (deemed vapid in comparison to his own historical research), and while the women of the village grow increasingly terrified at the prospect of a perverted murderer lurking in plain sight, Rowan implies that this concern towards the prospect of sexual violence is somehow hysterical. Interestingly, there are very few male characters within the novel, and those who do exist are often unspeaking or reduced to named references in dialogue. This in turn gives the impression of a reverse Bechdel Test at work (for those unfamiliar, the Bechdel Test is a hypothetical piece of light media criticism established by cartoonist Alison Bechdel, in which a piece of media passes the test by containing two named female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man): women are the lifeblood of this novel, and so are depictions of female anxieties in the face of male violence.
Consequently, the presence of this unreliable narrator again complicates the plot, but not merely due to his opinions: in the context of the novel, this unreliability extends to his alibis. We establish early on that, in his self-pitying contempt for everyone around him (‘contempt’ is a very good summary for Rowan’s character), Rowan is a drunk who spends much of his time at the local pub in order to avoid spending time with Cressida and Mary Rose, and as such, when Maureen Sutton does go missing, even Rowan himself does not know where he was at the time of the murder: was he in the pub, or doing something entirely different? As the pace continues to meander into foreboding territory - while the book clocks in at scarcely over 200 pages, the slow pacing lets us linger in the seething sense of ominousness we find ourselves in - I found that, by the time of the conclusion, it is possible to know almost less about the characters than I did at the beginning.
THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is a distinctly British story, and nowhere says it more that in the undertones of class which run beneath it like a skeleton. There is a reason why so many famous murder mysteries utilise the British village as their setting, and in many cases it’s because of the expectations people have of these villages. In many cases, especially in the 70’s-80’s in which we can assume the novel is set, these villages have increasingly become communities of the middle-class, especially in the South and with the benefit of proximity to London. Maureen, however, is established to have lived on the newly-built council estate on the outskirts of the village, which Cressida despises due to its being an ‘eyesore’ in comparison. This snobbery knots into the heart of the novel, with subtle references to the ruin of the village, not to mention some less-subtle victim-blaming of Maureen’s parents, assuming that the murder took place due to neglect at the hands of Maureen’s mother, unlike the very middle-class mothers who would never let such a thing happen to their children, and as such this turns into a somewhat (as far as we can get it with Rowan’s narration) intersectional look at not only how communities band together, but how they lash out in the face of terrible circumstances.
While they never meet each other - while alive - Maureen and Mary Rose share a very similar role within the narrative: we know very little about either of them, not only because of Rowan’s disinterest and fixation with himself and himself alone, but because both are devices demonstrating how young female innocence is devoured by male violence. In the case of Maureen, this is very literal: she is brutally murdered by an unknown assailant, and consequently becomes the face of this violence within the novel. However, considering Mary Rose, this loss of innocence is instead mitigated to her through her mother, who begins to fill her with her own paranoia (as we learn, Cressida has had previous negative experience with men, but I won’t detail them here for the sake of spoilers) and forcibly drags Mary Rose into the world of grief inhabited by the Suttons. While Cressida’s paranoia does go overboard on numerous occasions, the change is increasingly sinister due to the fact that, in the beginning, many of her worries are entirely valid: a girl the same age as her daughter has been murdered in their village, and living alone with her while her (useless) husband is away in London, there is no male protector from the equally male violence just outside the front door. Her behaviour is very similar to that which we can see among internet armchair detectives in the face of modern crimes, especially in her obsession. Alongside turning her cottage into a shrine to Maureen, complete with images taken from the newspapers, Cressida visits the crime scene and regales the neighbours with the gruesome details, and even crashes Maureen’s funeral, much to the distress of the Sutton family. At which point does her behaviour turn from maternal concern to outright fixation? While such a question is up to reader interpretation, I imagine it would be difficult for most to pinpoint an exact page number. Above all, both girls exist as tools for Rowan’s own discomfort: Mary Rose as an alien being to himself, whom he cannot separate from Cressida, and Maureen as a demonstration of the contempt he holds for women and girls throughout the novel. In many cases, his research - concerning a famous female scientist and scholar - is a failure for the same reason as his relationships; he simply cannot view the women in his life as individual people, as opposed to figures who serve specific purposes in his life and in relation to him. In many cases, this contempt (take a drink every time I say the word) boils down to a sweeping rendering of the entire novel - does anyone truly care about poor Maureen Sutton, or just the idea of her?
As befitting its subject matter, THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is a dark look at just how paranoia can seep into the heart of previously secure communities, and demonstrates a distinctly second-wave division between men and women in the face of male violence against women and girls. In a literary market where female rage and complicated women getting revenge is a demand in new releases, the novel is likely to slot into shelves despite the gap between its initial release and now, and even with this degree of separation, is just as ominous to a 2020s audience as to a 1980s audience: after all, the famous ship the Mary Rose sank before it left the harbour, and the reference doesn’t bode well for Blackwood’s Mary Rose either…
*THE FATE OF MARY ROSE is being published by Virago Press on the 7th of November 2024: remember to support your brick-and-mortar bookshops, particularly indies! Thank you to Virago Press and Little, Brown Books for an eArc in exchange for an honest review.
December 11, 2024
Are you kidding me? What in the world was that? Clearly a slice of hell between pages. I suppose it's a kind of genius, but what a dark, dark genius it is.
Want to read
November 12, 2025Incipit
Era morta già prima che venissi a sapere della sua esistenza.
Continua su IncipitMania
Era morta già prima che venissi a sapere della sua esistenza.
Continua su IncipitMania
August 5, 2025
Acerbically nasty and unsettling. What a great author she was. A mixture of Highsmith, Jackson, Fremlin and Dale. Absolutely addictive reading.
May 24, 2025
Disturbingly uncomfortable and sinister. Left a bit stunned
September 23, 2024
Historian Rowan Anderson is a craven, self-centred, man with no discernible affinity for the women is his life. He lives apart from his strange, inert, wife Cressida and their frail, pallid, daughter Mary Rose.
For appearance’s sake he visits them in their country cottage every few weeks, where an icy formality reigns, and Mary Rose regards him with a mute apathy.
When a local child is raped and murdered Cressida’s oddness evolves into an obsessive mania of fear and wrath. She’s despairingly exalted by this opportunity to demonstrate the danger of the world, and the men who fill it, to her daughter.
As Cressida’s behaviours become more erratic, the congenitally unwilling Rowan is put under pressure to actually DO something about it. As what he liked best about his family was that he didn’t really need to involve himself with it, he initially finds this beyond his capabilities and interest, a position which quickly becomes untenable.
Like John Fowles’ The Collector the book puts us inside the head of a truly appalling human being, a man who can only find interest in his own purposes. Everyone else is a peg upon which to hang bits of his life.
Rowan has zero empathy, but intellectually can recognise remarkable women. The book he is trying to write about Hertha Ayrton (look her up, she rocks) and her incredible achievements is failing because he can document facts, but he can’t imbue his text with any sense of “the woman”. I thought this was a great character touch.
Cressida is monstrous in an entirely captivating way. We can’t look away, and we long to know what happened to her to make her this way. We know what makes Rowan such a shit: privilege.
The book is a bleak farce, reflecting the frictions between the classes, the sexes, and the rural and the urban. It has the traditional structure - a character trying to keep plates spinning in the face of endless disturbance and disruption, reaching fever pitch - but there are few laughs here. There is wit, but the horror is intense, delivered with fast jabbing gut-punches.
Extraordinary.
For appearance’s sake he visits them in their country cottage every few weeks, where an icy formality reigns, and Mary Rose regards him with a mute apathy.
When a local child is raped and murdered Cressida’s oddness evolves into an obsessive mania of fear and wrath. She’s despairingly exalted by this opportunity to demonstrate the danger of the world, and the men who fill it, to her daughter.
As Cressida’s behaviours become more erratic, the congenitally unwilling Rowan is put under pressure to actually DO something about it. As what he liked best about his family was that he didn’t really need to involve himself with it, he initially finds this beyond his capabilities and interest, a position which quickly becomes untenable.
Like John Fowles’ The Collector the book puts us inside the head of a truly appalling human being, a man who can only find interest in his own purposes. Everyone else is a peg upon which to hang bits of his life.
Rowan has zero empathy, but intellectually can recognise remarkable women. The book he is trying to write about Hertha Ayrton (look her up, she rocks) and her incredible achievements is failing because he can document facts, but he can’t imbue his text with any sense of “the woman”. I thought this was a great character touch.
Cressida is monstrous in an entirely captivating way. We can’t look away, and we long to know what happened to her to make her this way. We know what makes Rowan such a shit: privilege.
The book is a bleak farce, reflecting the frictions between the classes, the sexes, and the rural and the urban. It has the traditional structure - a character trying to keep plates spinning in the face of endless disturbance and disruption, reaching fever pitch - but there are few laughs here. There is wit, but the horror is intense, delivered with fast jabbing gut-punches.
Extraordinary.
February 27, 2014
"I lost all sense of proportion once I started talking about my beloved project. I lost all my usual lightness of touch. I saturated people with unwanted information." (p. 62-63)
The above quotation is the one from the book that seems most readily applicable to my life on a daily basis. But it continues and the rest of the passage is the lens through which I viewed the book:
"And although she was glad that I planned to give my biography a feminist slant, she felt that I was a champion of woman's emancipation only in the abstract. Personal experience made her question my integrity on this particular issue. She had no doubt that intellectually I took my position seriously. But so did the left-wing radicals who love to talk about the lot of the worker as they drink champagne cocktails at the Ritz." (p. 63)
This book is interesting in that it's part murder mystery/part psychological horror of the family unit as told from the vantage point of a misanthropic (or at the least misogynist) protagonist father who's tethered to a loveless marriage. As he narrates you aren't sure how much you should relate to him because while his situation does some precarious and lamentable, he spends about half of the text insulting all of the female characters which, as a reader/person, seems a dickbag move and is a hard thing to support. The way Blackwood's writing can control you is pretty admirable. About halfway through I was convinced that it was a boilerplate whodunnit that, at most, might have a surprise killer reveal. Then she shifts into feminist territory but then (unfortunately) curbs that to move toward a family kidnapping scenario. There's also some great descriptive phrasing throughout. Shout out to twitter friends who send me books!
The above quotation is the one from the book that seems most readily applicable to my life on a daily basis. But it continues and the rest of the passage is the lens through which I viewed the book:
"And although she was glad that I planned to give my biography a feminist slant, she felt that I was a champion of woman's emancipation only in the abstract. Personal experience made her question my integrity on this particular issue. She had no doubt that intellectually I took my position seriously. But so did the left-wing radicals who love to talk about the lot of the worker as they drink champagne cocktails at the Ritz." (p. 63)
This book is interesting in that it's part murder mystery/part psychological horror of the family unit as told from the vantage point of a misanthropic (or at the least misogynist) protagonist father who's tethered to a loveless marriage. As he narrates you aren't sure how much you should relate to him because while his situation does some precarious and lamentable, he spends about half of the text insulting all of the female characters which, as a reader/person, seems a dickbag move and is a hard thing to support. The way Blackwood's writing can control you is pretty admirable. About halfway through I was convinced that it was a boilerplate whodunnit that, at most, might have a surprise killer reveal. Then she shifts into feminist territory but then (unfortunately) curbs that to move toward a family kidnapping scenario. There's also some great descriptive phrasing throughout. Shout out to twitter friends who send me books!
December 11, 2024
Lush, dark, gothic. This was a good one!
November 27, 2025
I came to Caroline Blackwood’s work after finding out about the whole Lowell-Hardwick-Blackwood love triangle. Apparently I can’t resist a little literary scandal, so I’ve had the three of them on my radar ever since. I haven’t read any of Lowell’s poetry yet, but I did bounce off Hardwick’s ‘Sleepless Nights’ a few months ago, which admittedly was a bit of a blow since it seemed so up my alley. On the contrary, Blackwood’s fiction didn’t necessarily sound all that interesting to me, but I had committed to one so decided to commit to the other. Thankfully, the opposite happened, and while the ‘The Fate of Mary Rose’ didn’t strictly have much blurb appeal, I very quickly found myself completely sucked in by this dark little story.
Blackwood’s real strength here was her narrative voice. Her characterisation through prose and viewpoint. It was so remarkably strong that it was essentially all encompassing. Every time I had to put the book down, it took a second to shake myself back into my real life. I always respect an author that isn’t scared to fully inhabit an unreliable and inarguably quite annoying character, and Blackwood is fearless in that regard here. I also really respected how strange and dark she allowed this story to become. I haven’t read anything that has got me to say what the fuck out loud in a long time, and as someone that feels like nothing can really shock them all that much anymore, the power to make that happen is impressive.
I did like the ending, it was definitely a fitting end for the story at hand and did the story justice, but part of me was a tiny bit disappointed it didn’t go even wilder. After all, Blackwood had earned it. She had built the tension and the oppressive atmosphere so well, so gradually, she essentially could have told me anything by the end and I don’t think I would have questioned it.
I really, really liked this novel. I not only thought it had some poignant commentary on these kinds of murder cases and the hysteria around them, among other thing, but Blackwood’s absolute command of the narrative here in pure story and character terms cannot be overstated; I don’t think there’s really a single weakness that I could pick out. I’m definitely glad this one was resurrected from the out of print graveyard, and I’m equally glad it ended up in my hands. I’ll definitely be seeking it out more of her work.
Blackwood’s real strength here was her narrative voice. Her characterisation through prose and viewpoint. It was so remarkably strong that it was essentially all encompassing. Every time I had to put the book down, it took a second to shake myself back into my real life. I always respect an author that isn’t scared to fully inhabit an unreliable and inarguably quite annoying character, and Blackwood is fearless in that regard here. I also really respected how strange and dark she allowed this story to become. I haven’t read anything that has got me to say what the fuck out loud in a long time, and as someone that feels like nothing can really shock them all that much anymore, the power to make that happen is impressive.
I did like the ending, it was definitely a fitting end for the story at hand and did the story justice, but part of me was a tiny bit disappointed it didn’t go even wilder. After all, Blackwood had earned it. She had built the tension and the oppressive atmosphere so well, so gradually, she essentially could have told me anything by the end and I don’t think I would have questioned it.
I really, really liked this novel. I not only thought it had some poignant commentary on these kinds of murder cases and the hysteria around them, among other thing, but Blackwood’s absolute command of the narrative here in pure story and character terms cannot be overstated; I don’t think there’s really a single weakness that I could pick out. I’m definitely glad this one was resurrected from the out of print graveyard, and I’m equally glad it ended up in my hands. I’ll definitely be seeking it out more of her work.
November 29, 2025
hauntingly incredible
June 12, 2025
i’m really enjoying “rediscovered classics” at the moment (books written by women in the 20th century that have sex and violence in them) because i kinda naively always assumed that anything written before the year 2000 was crap and boring. this is an absolute banger and i’m very glad i realised that women have been writing mad shit as long as women have been writing.
May 29, 2025
Wow. I felt my frustration grow with every page. What a fantastic and insane book. Cressida is a truly terrifying figure.
November 9, 2025
after reading it a second time i appreciated it more but i still can’t get over the ending
October 10, 2025
Spiazzante. Uno stile che all’inizio mi aveva quasi infastidito, è poi diventato il punto forte del libro. Una spirale inquietante dalla quale non ci si riesce a staccare.
February 18, 2025
Even if the storyline had been bad, this novel would have delivered in atmosphere alone. It was eerie and sinister, with an odd air of mystery that meant I was completely absorbed in it.
The lessons that it so clearly aims to teach were weaved in seamlessly, and having the story told from Rowan’s perspective further hammered in the all too awful truth of how men often view the supposed ’hysteria’ of women and girls when violence is committed against them. The greedy reaction of the public to Maureen’s murder and the subsequent discussion of class differences and media sensationalism in true crime are still relevant today, and remain important topics to regularly touch upon.
Caroline Blackwood’s writing in this novel is outstanding and it has definitely encouraged me to read more of her works.
The lessons that it so clearly aims to teach were weaved in seamlessly, and having the story told from Rowan’s perspective further hammered in the all too awful truth of how men often view the supposed ’hysteria’ of women and girls when violence is committed against them. The greedy reaction of the public to Maureen’s murder and the subsequent discussion of class differences and media sensationalism in true crime are still relevant today, and remain important topics to regularly touch upon.
Caroline Blackwood’s writing in this novel is outstanding and it has definitely encouraged me to read more of her works.
March 8, 2025
I was marked by reading Great Granny Webster when I was about 8, never forgot it, or the sense of menace it held. I picked this up lazily without really considering it - but it’s a regret from me, I’m afraid. The one star is for yes, the Shirley Jackson sense of something awful underneath the humdrum. But I found Rowans horrible voice, his naked contempt for women and children just horrible to read, and even though not through him…..overall a tad too much narrative excitement surrounding the murder and sexual assault of a small child. It lost the sense of ‘something nasty in the woodshed’ and just became one note shrill. I didn’t like it.
July 7, 2025
3.5 stars
40% of this book was the narrator being insufferable. Of the remaining 60%, 59% was excellent and had me completely hooked, and 1% - the ending - was what I can only describe as literary blue balls.
40% of this book was the narrator being insufferable. Of the remaining 60%, 59% was excellent and had me completely hooked, and 1% - the ending - was what I can only describe as literary blue balls.
Want to read
September 27, 2024horrifying and disturbing books written by my favorite historical horrifying and disturbing woman
December 2, 2025
Genuinely a bit horrifying this, mainly in how Blackwood manages to almost make you feel sorry for Rowan despite him being utterly dreadful for the rest of the book.
There were some aspects of this that I loved. The use of setting to split Rowan's urban and rural lives; the use of media / obsession with true crime leading to mass hysteria; the mass hysteria spiralling all the more owing to the bubble rural world of Beckham.
I think more than all this though was the question of Rowan's guilt. The story flip flops between suggesting he raped and murdered the child and then pointing out he was too drunk to do it (but notably never saying that he wouldn't have done it otherwise). Indeed, you almost feel like he must have done it at points given how he acts.
But then just as he is confirmed as innocent things get worse for him with his attempted kidnap of his daughter and wrongful accusation from his wife. Truly gothic stuff!
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the gender split in this - it gets a bit tricky when you have to see everyone through Rowan's eyes - but the theme of paternal abandonment is clear. Just as you start to hear about Cressida's awful upbringing is the moment when she really turns mad which i think almost diminishes any empathy that the character could gain in the moment.
Going to keep mulling this over but I will say that im a big fan of the performalistic feminism displayed by Rowan (and his anger when bloody real women im his life stop him focusing on the female engineer he wants to write about!!!!).
There were some aspects of this that I loved. The use of setting to split Rowan's urban and rural lives; the use of media / obsession with true crime leading to mass hysteria; the mass hysteria spiralling all the more owing to the bubble rural world of Beckham.
I think more than all this though was the question of Rowan's guilt. The story flip flops between suggesting he raped and murdered the child and then pointing out he was too drunk to do it (but notably never saying that he wouldn't have done it otherwise). Indeed, you almost feel like he must have done it at points given how he acts.
But then just as he is confirmed as innocent things get worse for him with his attempted kidnap of his daughter and wrongful accusation from his wife. Truly gothic stuff!
I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the gender split in this - it gets a bit tricky when you have to see everyone through Rowan's eyes - but the theme of paternal abandonment is clear. Just as you start to hear about Cressida's awful upbringing is the moment when she really turns mad which i think almost diminishes any empathy that the character could gain in the moment.
Going to keep mulling this over but I will say that im a big fan of the performalistic feminism displayed by Rowan (and his anger when bloody real women im his life stop him focusing on the female engineer he wants to write about!!!!).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 20, 2025
I haven’t experienced this much adrenaline reading a book in a while, I literally couldn’t look away (and read it all in one day!). It’s thick in atmosphere, twisted characters and dripping in anxiety. I felt like screaming the entire way through for various reasons, mainly at the main character. This would be an amazing novel to study at A Level, particularly if looking at themes of accountability, female rage and narrative cognitive bias.
Highly recommend for any fans of Gone Girl.
Highly recommend for any fans of Gone Girl.
February 16, 2025
Woof! I loved it
December 25, 2025
Absolutely nothing of importance happened 😑 it was so boring
December 17, 2025
This book is seriously dark & unsettling. If you want a masterclass in slow-burn, suffocating dread, you should absolutely pick it up
Read
October 12, 2025my wueen of uncanny people.
March 4, 2025
An incredibly compelling, well-written and dark thriller that hooked me from the first page and held my attention until its close. I really loved this book, and it took me by surprise. I would recommend if you’re a fan of Shirley Jackson and like a slow burning spooky read.
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