Mrs S by K Patrick
K Patrick's runaway hit Mrs S explores gender and queerness during a simmering summer at an all-girls boarding school
| 24 Nov 2023
Book title:
Mrs S
Author:
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.
School operates and trades on this social landscape, which the adults pretend not to participate in while beholden to the very same rumour mill. Patrick renders them with delicious accuracy in their small social details and their tender moments of not quite concealed vulnerability. The sexual and romantic tension the narrator finds with the eponymous Mrs S is perfect and runs deep into considerations of nuanced queerness and gendered dynamics – the moment a character makes air quotes around the word heterosexuality is a heartwrenching loss of commonality. This novel explores what can be ignored and hidden from and what safety can be found in secrecy.