Molly Pohlig's The Unsuitable is a fierce blend of Gothic ghost story and Victorian novel of manners that’s also pitch perfect for our current cultural moment.
Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman perilously close to spinsterhood whose distinctly unpleasant father is trying to marry her off. She is awkward, plain, and most pertinently, believes that her mother, who died in childbirth, lives in the scar on her neck.
Iseult’s father parades a host of unsuitable candidates before her, the majority of whom Iseult wastes no time frightening away. When at last her father finds a suitor desperate enough to take Iseult off his hands―a man whose medical treatments have turned his skin silver―a true comedy of errors ensues.
As history’s least conventional courtship progresses into talk of marriage, Iseult’s mother becomes increasingly volatile and uncontrollable, and Iseult is forced to resort to extreme, often violent, measures to keep her in check.
As the day of the wedding nears, Iseult must decide whether (and how) to set the course of her life, with increasing interference from both her mother and father, tipping her ever closer to madness, and to an inevitable, devastating final act.
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"[Esther] Wane neatly conveys moments of dark humor against the looming tone of Gothic horror. Although Iseult dominates the narrative, Wane uses distinct tones, pacing, and inflections to convey the housekeeper’s motherly fussing, Jacob’s gentle kindness, Beatrice’s cajoling harangues, and her father’s emotional cruelty. Wane creates a haunting emotional roller coaster as Iseult’s tale explores parental love and the obligations of marriage.
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