K Patrick's mesmerizing debut, Mrs. S, is atmospheric and disorienting in the most effective way. The unnamed narrator, the Matron at a girls' boarding school in the English countryside, calls her charges "The Girls," also unnamed throughout. The details readers learn of her surface through others' observations or direct questions: a bookstore clerk apes her Australian accent; a bartender questions her age ("You work at the school?... Not a student?"). Dialogue runs together with no quotation marks and no sign of who is speaking. But Patrick shows readers how to detect the nuances of observation and conversation, and they view events as the narrator does, burrowing ever deeper into the world of Mrs. S.
The title character appears on the first page: "Her energy is concentrated and precise, light through a magnifying glass." The narrator's obsession with Mrs. S grows from there. Theirs is a forbidden tryst; Mrs. S is the headmaster's wife. They steal a moment for a smoke in an abandoned van behind a gas station after church, an embrace in the kitchen as Mrs. S prepares dinner--all building up to their lovemaking in the vestry of the church. The claustrophobia of the school and its web of rumors makes the clandestine relationship all the more miraculous, and Patrick's sharp, pithy sentences underscore its suffocating environment ("The school pretends to be a town"). The scenes between the Matron and Mrs. S stop time, open borders, emancipate them. Yet it is an impossible connection. How can it end? Patrick will keep readers turning the pages to find out. This is a writer to watch. --Jennifer M. Brown, senior editor, Shelf Awareness