The Harpy
by Megan Hunter
Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy has set her career aside in order to devote her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, Jake. The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but make a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage–she will hurt him three times. As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return. Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power, control and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.
With a surprisingly dark, twisted take on so domestic an issue, The Harpy stands out starkly in the sea of novels focused on marital infidelity. One of the 5 Can’t Miss Late Summer Book Releases, The Harpy was a novel I’d almost written off based on the synopsis alone, until that irresistibly intriguing twist made itself known—The Deal. Three times, the wife gets to hurt the husband. Three times and they’ll be even. But what does this do to this woman? Why is she drawn to this form of retribution?
With a relatively quiet approach, The Harpy delves into the mind of Lucy Stevenson, a mother and wife and, perhaps most importantly, a woman contemplating how those roles have taken her over in the aftermath of discovering her husband’s infidelity. This novel, though short, simmers with Lucy’s slow-building rage and dawning understanding of just how much of herself she’s given up in order to be a “good” wife and mother. In doing this, she contemplates her choices in life that led to these roles that—in her case and many others—come with so much more responsibility, expectation, and judgement than those of husband and father.
It’s within this contemplation that she thinks of her newest role, that of the scorned woman. It unsettles her in more than the obvious way and she wonders how she is supposed to feel about it, how she is supposed to react—looking for something that feels genuine to herself, not to the ideas we’ve seen perpetuated in the media. In the face of the shocking betrayal, she recognizes that maybe it’s not that shocking at all. Not to her, not to the neighbors and friends who now look at her differently. She sees how her husband’s transgressions somehow reflect badly on her and become something that she needs to face in their company, not him. It’s her that’s left embarrassed and feeling exposed. It’s in this mindset that she agrees to what Jake suggests: that she gets to hurt him three times in retribution. This prompts a return to an obsession that never truly left her: the harpy from the stories of her childhood, the harpy she held onto throughout earning her Classics degree. The Harpy, who punishes men for the bad things they do. At the essence of this novel is a simple premise—a woman returning to herself.
There is an exploration of these repressed feelings as the anger builds up in Lucy. Her growing awareness and recognition of the roles she’s slotted into—by her own choosing, by society’s standards, by the judgmental gaze of others—leave her unsettled. The Harpy manages to tackle Lucy’s marriage issues without losing itself in all the overdone, been-there-done-that tropes of the scorned woman or a marriage in the midst of a breakdown, but it doesn’t manage to extract itself enough from the simple boredom of so trite a situation. Though a couple coming to an agreement that one partner gets to hurt the other is a decidedly strange and twisted idea, I was surprised at how tame this bargain was as it unfolded. This tameness was actually an approach I appreciated, it kept the bargain from breaking the spell of normal domesticity and pushing the novel too far into a crazed revenge or psychological thriller direction. The harpy element adds a layer of intrigue that’s unexpected, but it is used too sparingly to impact the overall experience in a meaningful way, aside from the dramatic, though ultimately unsatisfying, ending. This novel cracks open the door to mythological involvement, but never fully opens it. Toeing the line of fantastical elements within an otherwise realistic contemporary fiction novel can be done in such a way that keeps readers guessing and adds depth to the story (ex: Sisters by Daisy Johnson), but The Harpy’s approach bordered on dull.
With an interesting structure of short chapters interrupted by very brief passages depicting memories and the role of the harpy in Lucy’s life, The Harpy was a quick read. Though the incorporation of the harpy itself lacked the impact I’d hoped for, I could still appreciate the structure of the harpy’s passages, the minute pauses they created in the overall story where we learned about Lucy’s past and the harpy’s involvement, drawing parallels between the creature and Lucy’s current metamorphosis. The passages were extremely brief, but certainly the most intriguing element of the novel. Hunter’s writing was basic and unobtrusive, but did little to illuminate or enrich the plot. While I think there was a fantastic realism to Lucy as a character and I appreciated the unique way in which she was depicted (avoiding and acknowledging stereotypes), I found her to be a completely average, forgettable woman—and I feel that was the point. She is what everyone thinks of as a “regular woman,” which is why her story is easy to sympathize with—and why many women will be able to recognize something of themselves in her dissatisfaction and anger. Despite the intentions behind Lucy, I wasn’t captivated by her or her story.
While certain elements made The Harpy stand out and added intrigue, too much of this novel still read as a completely average foray into a dissolving marriage. Despite the worthwhile and interesting big-picture themes, the page-level intrigue wasn’t consistent enough to fully distinguish itself as something other than a glimpse into Lucy’s dull daily life. The ending was abrupt and unfocused, leaving more questions than answers. I could still appreciate the themes within The Harpy and its unique approach, but it ultimately was not the story I’d hoped for.
3/5
Thanks for reading,
Madison