Mrs S.

A BEST BOOK OF SUMMER 2023
A JULY 2023 INDIE NEXT PICK

A sublime and sensual debut novel exploring the nature of queer love and attraction, the transformative power of desire, and the dissonance between self and place, by White Review Fiction Prize shortlisted writer K Patrick

In an elite English boarding school where the girls kiss the marble statue of the famous dead author who used to walk the halls, a butch antipodean outsider arrives to take up the antiquated role of "matron." Within this landscape of immense privilege, where difference is met with hostility, the matron finds herself unsure of her role, her accent and her body.

That is until she meets Mrs. S, the headmaster's wife, a woman who is her polar opposite--an assured, authoritative paragon of femininity. Over the course of a long, restless summer, their unspoken yearning blooms into an illicit affair of electric intensity. But, as the summer fades, a choice must be made.

Seductive, stylish, and disarmingly wry, K Patrick's bold and revelatory debut smolders with the heat of summer as it explores the queer experience and the force of forbidden love.

"Patrick's poetic, at times elliptical prose style is perfect for building erotic tension." — Shayne Terry, Chicago Review of Books

"An erotic yet high-minded literary achievement." — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"Revelatory...Patrick makes palpable the compromises required by secret love, and though the romance is aching and well crafted, what emerges above all is a fascinating character portrait, that of a woman obscure to the world but radiant inside." — Publishers Weekly

K Patrick is a writer based in Glasgow. Their poetry has appeared in Poetry Review and Five Dials, and was shortlisted for The White Review Poetry Prize in 2021, the same year that K was shortlisted for The White Review Fiction Prize for their short story "Eggs". In 2020, they were runner-up in the Ivan Juritz Prize and the Laura Kinsella Fellowship. Mrs. S is their debut novel.