book review magpie by elizabeth day

Fri 15 Nov 2024

2024 newspaper of the year

@ Contact us

Your newsletters

Magpie by Elizabeth Day, review: a compulsive motherhood thriller with an electric twist

In her pacy and assured fourth novel, day writes with hair-raising accuracy about the madnesses of fertility, pregnancy, infertility, miscarriage, and love.

Marisa and Jake have not long been a couple when they move in together and decide to start trying for a baby. Sometimes, as Marisa tells us, “When you know, you just know.” Then a lodger moves in, too: Kate, with her dungarees, her PR job and her increasingly proprietorial manner towards the house, its contents… and Jake.

The opening of Magpie is decidedly creepy, as Marisa settles into the couple’s not-quite-right house, trying to make sense of both her past and a future filled with unknowns. As her hormones pitch and surge, she sees Kate everywhere, not just at home, but skulking at the back of her yoga class, and in Jake’s arms.

Elizabeth Day is the author of four novels, including The Party , and her handling of narrative is pacy and assured. Indeed, so compulsive is this book that there were times when, however quickly I read, it wasn’t fast enough. There is much talk on the book’s jacket about the twist, which is indeed electric, so much so that I had to go back and re-read the central section once my desire for plot had been sated.

The final third, by comparison, is less taut, although no less fascinating. Indeed, it could almost have been a book in itself: Jake’s domineering mother, Annabelle, comes to the fore as the reader is invited to consider what makes a woman a mother.

Magpie’s descriptions are often disturbingly memorable. A woman’s pregnancy bump appears to an infertile character as “a mountainous beacon of her indisputable womanhood”, while a rape is likened to having been pierced with shrapnel, “her entire self had to grow around it over the years that followed”.

Day writes with hair-raising accuracy on the madnesses of fertility and pregnancy, infertility and miscarriage, love and longing. When Kate tells us that she is not worthy of being a mother, that she is damaged, faulty in some way that she cannot define, her words resonate with a disconcertingly familiar despair.

Thank goodness that Magpie is funny, too. There is a yoga teacher who greets pregnant students with the words “Welcome, goddess”, a burnt-out boss who leaves PR to sell leggings with little gold ankle zips, and the unrelentingly awful Annabelle, who persists in calling her poor estranged daughter “Toad”.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney, review: A strange, imperfect book for strange, imperfect times

It is perhaps a shame that Jake is left somewhat sketchy, as overshadowed by his mother in personality as he is by the mechanics of the plot. Marisa and Kate, too, exist more fully in their recollections of the past than they seem to in the present.

Still, if we don’t ever quite seem to know these two women, at least not in the way their old friends do, perhaps that is the point. Longing for a baby, losing a baby, watching others become pregnant, carrying a baby; Magpie lays bare how such experiences can turn a person into someone new, unknown to anyone – even, and especially, to one’s shifting, vulnerable self.

Magpie by Elizabeth Day is out now (Fourth Estate, £14.99)

Regular Features

Author spotlights, "bookreporter talks to" videos & podcasts, "bookaccino live: a lively talk about books", favorite monthly lists & picks, seasonal features, book festivals, sports features, bookshelves.

Coming Soon

Newsletters

Weekly Update
On Sale This Week

Fall Reading

Summer Reading
Spring Preview
Winter Reading
Holiday Cheer

Word of Mouth

Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:.

MAGPIE, Elizabeth Day's tautly woven, emotionally resonant domestic suspense novel, is about the perfect couple, their perfect pregnancy and their not-so-perfect lodger.

Abandoned by her mother as a child, Marisa never thought that children were in the cards for her. Although she has carved out a decent living writing and illustrating personalized children’s books, she and her best friend, Jas, are equal losers in the race to romance. Disappointed with online dating and sick of weird, creepy and emotionally unavailable men, Marisa is just about to call it quits when she meets Jake. Conventionally handsome, goal-oriented and, above all, interested, Jake is almost perfect. Almost. He can be a bit standoffish, is not prone to public displays of affection, and has a weird, codependent relationship with his posh mother, Annabelle, who falls apart if he misses his regularly scheduled weekly phone calls and seems to have her hand in everything he does.

Still, there is one very important thing that Marisa and Jake have in common: they are both ready to start a family, and, given the slim odds of the dating pool, they know it is now or never. So, despite their 10-year age difference, they move in together (a convenient arrangement for Marisa, whose career is not exactly taking off) and decide to embark on the path to parenthood.

"MAGPIE is a twisty, subversive suspense story that, in addition to being a compelling mystery, employs real-world, complicated issues to ramp up the tension."

All is well in their perfect world until Jake reveals to Marisa that he has experienced some financial setbacks at work, and they will need to take in a temporary lodger. Almost immediately, Kate enters the picture. Thirty-six (closer in age to Jake), employed in the publicity department of a film production company, petite, dark-haired and slender, Kate appears to be a stable, responsible lodger. Besides, Jake has always expressed his preference for curvy blondes like Marisa, so it’s not like she has any competition to fear.

Still, the strain of attempting to become pregnant has taken a toll on Marisa’s relationship with Jake. After experiencing the abandonment of her mother at such a young age, she is particularly sensitive to the anxieties that come with wandering eyes and a woman who may have more in common with her intelligent, posh boyfriend than she does. Just when Marisa starts to catch a whiff of something stronger than a tenant-landlord relationship between Kate and Jake, the miraculous happens: she is pregnant, the two lines on the test appearing as a promise of a future free from anxiety and desertion.

As her pregnancy begins, Marisa cannot help but notice bizarre behaviors in Kate. She seems to know things about Marisa and Jake that she shouldn’t; she is strangely possessive of Jake; and she turns up more than once when Marisa is attending yoga or grabbing a cup of coffee. As Kate’s presence becomes smothering and Jake’s attention dwindles, Marisa feels certain that something is amiss, and the only way to ensure her and her baby’s happiness is to figure out what Kate really wants from their lodging arrangement. But between her insecurities, pregnancy hormones, and desperation to preserve her relationship and future, Marisa is stretched to the limit. That’s when her own carefully painted facade begins to crumble, and Kate takes center stage.

MAGPIE is a twisty, subversive suspense story that, in addition to being a compelling mystery, employs real-world, complicated issues to ramp up the tension. Day writes about the struggles of fertility, fertility treatments and the invasive questions and suggestions of others with great wisdom, clarity and compassion. Her control of Marisa's and Kate's emotions, motivations and aspirations never once lets up, even as each woman oscillates between obsession, depression, paranoia and even outright cruelty.

Day deals with seriously complex and difficult subjects, including mental illness, but she handles each element with great sensitivity while never detracting from the nail-biting suspense. Her twists and turns are shocking, unpredictable and often nerve-wracking. And her use of pregnancy --- literally the taking over of a woman’s body --- as a metaphor and a literal fact is relentlessly clever, resulting in tonal shifts from the sinister to the claustrophobic and even the euphoric.

If I have a single complaint about MAGPIE, it’s that the ending felt rushed and a bit too tidy. Day played so effortlessly with her brilliant characters, casting each of them as the villain at one point or another, that the dainty bow she wraps them in at the conclusion feels too convenient and not up to the standard she set earlier in the book. That said, this is a necessary and deeply suspenseful thriller that will make Day a quick favorite among readers of Lisa Jewell, Sarah Vaughan and Katherine Faulkner.

Reviewed by Rebecca Munro on May 6, 2022

Magpie by Elizabeth Day

Publication Date: May 2, 2023
Genres: Domestic Thriller , Fiction , Psychological Suspense , Psychological Thriller , Suspense , Thriller
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN-10: 1982187611
ISBN-13: 9781982187613