Horrors Across Borders – SPAIN: Feito’s Victorian Pscyho: A Satire of the Comedy of Manners

My book from Spain is Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito. The title is what caught me. I remember being in a book store, our independent place called Watermark Books, where I was in the process of getting Gray Inside on the shelf. I took a little time to look around the horror section when I first found it. The title made me think of American Pscyho, one of my favorite books. But I was poor and couldn’t afford it. A year later, it pops up in my Audible app. I remember it from Watermark, so I used a credit on it. As I began listening, I really dug the performance, but thanks to my ADHD it can be difficult to listen to audiobooks when my mind wanders like a lost child. I ordered the paperback and read it in a couple of days. 

One thing to note is that the author is from Spain. The book takes place during Victorian England, 1858. I’ve decided that I’m going by the author’s place of birth or where a great deal of their life took place, so this will count as my book from Spain. This book sets itself apart by having the governess be a murderous psycho. 

Make no mistake; this is what you call a comedy of manners. Our narrator and main character is Winifred Notty, and she’s the new governess at the Endsor House, home to a rich family with a full on staff taking care of everything they need, an all too familiar setup for about five hundred other books in the genre. There’s Mr Pounds, the pompous dweeb who tries to be the smartest guy in the room while also sort of flaunting his wealth to his friends. Mrs Pounds, who is basically explained as a hostile piece of garbage, even though the reader can easily see why. Then the children whom Ms Notty is to educate – Andrew and Drusila (Keep a close eye on them both). The writing style is pretty spot on for this kind of book during the Victorian period, though the language makes use of present tense, mostly short paragraphs, and short chapters. The book is not even 200 pages. 

To me, this is a give and take situation. What is the author’s chosen intent? On one side, you could make relatively thin characters to keep momentum as well as influence the satirical bite. On the other, you could develop the characters a little more and attach more emotion to the savage events that unfold. This would make the book significantly longer too. Feito Feito goes for the fast satirical bite, though there is still a lot going on. The characters are explained by their actions and dialogue. And with a little intuition, you can sort of get a hint of depth for each of the characters by the subtext of their behavior. For me this was effective, though I still wish she would have gone a tad further, getting this to maybe 250 pages with a little more emotion to the violence. I don’t really want to mention examples because I don’t want to spoil you. 

Think of it as American Psycho Light, not that the characters in the book are deep characters; they’re not, but because Victorian Psycho feels rushed by comparison. Though, I could say that the snappy quickness gives a sort of quirkiness to Miss Notty. 

Miss Notty is a ticking bomb. From the very start of the book, you can see it. Her thoughts reflect it, and this is a frequent occurrence with her descriptions. She often has bizarre and grotesque and alarming thoughts, especially in her comparisons. For instance, right at the start of the book, she tells us “My boots land in mud with the squelch of viscera squeezed in a fist.” She doesn’t compare it to anything normal, no. She goes straight for the bizarre gross out, and she does this frequently, for the most part getting more elaborate as the story develops. This is one of many behaviors you can almost hear that clock ticking toward an explosion. 

Think about what an unreliable narrator is. This is when the narrator’s accounts of the characters and events around them, may not be an accurate depiction of other characters and events.  I think we have a pretty good example here. Keep a lookout at the actions of other characters and how she describes then. Especially keep an eye on Mrs Pounds. She isn’t the nicest of characters, but you can sort of understand why she’s reacting the way she is.

So think of it as a fast moving Victorian England comedy of manners with a violent governess. It’s fun. It’s witty. Maybe I’m wrong, but I feel like this could have been a bit longer to attach heavier emotion to the violence. Maybe 250 pages. With that length, you could still keep the fast and witty snappiness. 

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