Madam by Phoebe Wynne

Madam is Phoebe Wynne's debut novel.  Rose Christie is a young Classics teacher who is recruited to teach at Caldonbrae Hall, an exclusive boarding school for girls with an isolated location high on the Scottish cliffs. Things are weird from the moment Rose arrives at Caldonbrae, with its elitist and conservative views conflicting with her modern feminist views, and pretty soon Rose is enmeshed in a mysterious institution and can't find a way out. 

I thought this was creepy and propulsive and I spent most of the book trying to figure out how exactly Rose could get out of this place. I thought the Scottish setting was appropriately spooky, I liked how Wynne interspersed interstitial stories from mythology between chapters to show what the students would be learning. I was a wee bit annoyed by the fact that no one would tell Rose anything, but it was sort of integrated into the plot, so I got over that. The thing that gets this book dinged on a lot of Goodreads reviews is the sheer implausibility of the institution, the fact that this takes place in the 1990s, but reads like the 1890s, particularly in the curriculum.  I think, in light of what we've learned about Jeffrey Epstein and Jimmy Savile, it seems to me that abusive institutions exist and this is just a fictionalized account of what one may look like.

ANYWAY.

It was creepy. I didn't know what was going to happen. I liked the juxtaposition of Rose's home life and school life. I thought this was a solid read. 4/5 stars

Things I Looked Up:

Dagenham women (page 98) - Nearly 200 women walked out of a Ford plant in Dagenham, England in 1968. They were protesting unequal treatment and their strike led to widespread attention to inequities and led to important legislation on equal pay in the UK.

Spare Rib magazine (page 98) - Feminist UK magazine that ran from 1972-1993.

Section 28 (page 316) - A series of laws across Britain that prohibited the "promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities. It was in effect from 1988 to 2000 in Scotland and from 1988 to 2003 in England and Wales. It was a real blow to student support groups in schools in the UK.  Thanks, Margaret Thatcher.