The ‘mad woman in the attic’ is an archetypal force to be reckoned with in this gothic tale of metamorphosis

You don’t tend to encounter much body horror in historical fiction. We have our bold innovators, to be sure, but for many the archaic and the genteel remain oddly synonymous. The good news, if that’s you, is that there’s almost no swearing in Heather Parry’s new novel. The bad news is that it’s vile and unspeakable in almost every other way. But don’t let that put you off. Carrion Crow may be set in a fetid late Victorian London and couched in lightly brocaded prose, but what lurks within is unmistakably red in tooth and claw, a creature nearer in kinship to Kathy Acker than to Sarah Waters.

The body undergoing the horrors belongs, in this instance, to Marguerite Périgord, the daughter of a French noblewoman in reduced circumstances. When the wayward Marguerite attracts a suitor, a strenuously unromantic solicitor named Mr Lewis, Cécile Périgord isn’t taking any chances. In a show of aristocratic mettle, she imprisons Marguerite in the attic, there to acquire the complexion and manners her wifely vocation will require.