Mrs S by K Patrick

K Patrick’s debut novel Mrs S is everything you want it to be, and more. Our unnamed, ungendered protagonist (they notably never gender themselves, and are only uncomfortably gendered by others from the outside) is an outsider in an all-girls boarding school: Australian, visibly queer, too old to be one of The Girls, too young to be a teacher. Their role is somewhere between the categories of The Girls and the teaching staff, leaving them to navigate the social landscape of the two. The Girls are a conglomerate protagonist all of their own, sometimes splitting off into individuals (a girl that punches a boy) or small groups but never named; simultaneously denied their characterisation and given the power of the mass.