Madeleine is young for motherhood, a promising grad student in Victorian and Modernist literature, twenty-three and not long married. But Madeleine’s ambivalence is pushed aside by Tom’s elation and her own joy at bringing new life to the world. Then comes Maud, perfect and fresh and worth every moment of difficult labor. But after just a few nights, something seems amiss, changed. The child never stops crying. Her hunger is insatiable. Her eyes glint with some kind of ancient mischief. Could Maud be a fairy child, swapped when Madeleine wasn’t paying attention?
Excellent ... When protagonist Maddie, a 20-something grad student in an unnamed English city, becomes pregnant, she is full of hope. But after the baby comes, something sinister grips her daily life — the feedings and naps, collapsing and uncollapsing the stroller, being simultaneously desperate for company and uncomfortable around others — with a mythical, impending edge.
There’s an immediate psychological tension running through Emily McBride’s debut novel, Queen Mab. Marrying literary drama and folk horror to depict the madness of new motherhood and the transformation that is pregnancy, this dreamy, haunting journey is the must-read arrival of a potent new voice in fiction ... Whether you come for the fairy lore or the boundless drama of life with a new baby, Queen Mab is a gripping debut.
There’s magic—or madness—in McBride’s debut, much as in stories of Queen Mab, but there’s also a visceral and real sense of the characters’ daily lives ... Edgy Victorian fairy tales reshape reality for Madeline, but at times the message can feel a bit heavy-handed ... McBride establishes herself as someone ready to write (and be read) alongside authors of Helen Oyeyemi’s skill with this powerful exploration of the poetics and politics of motherhood.
