Three women come together for a birthday dinner in this ominous, pacy novel. We are first introduced to Alison, a 48-year-old famous actor on hiatus, killing a rabbit caught in a trap on the moors that surround her mansion on the outskirts of Edinburgh. She lives there in wealth with partner Patrick, lapsed rockstar turned film composer, a man who “was drawn to the idea of mystical, powerful men, and especially liked the idea that to a certain type of person he was one”.
They’re hilariously Gen X, reveling in the wildness of their youths, drinking too much, trading acerbic barbs. Alison is a hard woman, grieving the death of her mother Frances, and has just realised she’s pregnant for the first time. If at first she seems cast in the role of evil step-mother, as the novel progresses other villains step out of the shadows.
They’ve been joined at the mansion for her gap year by Neve, Patrick’s daughter with his wife Shannon who is on her way from Australia to join them for Neve’s 18th birthday, for which Patrick and Allison have planned the titular feast. A possibly haunted house, a gathering, the Scottish wilds looming around them — from this minimal situation O’Grady wrings a grim and visceral fairytale.
All the characters carry secrets, revealed over the course of Feast through the alternating perspectives of Allison, Neve and Shannon. There’s something occult afoot, blurry visions and flickering at the periphery, as well as numerous references to rituals, potions, spells and fae things. Innards, fluids, bodily secretions proliferate; the characters fight their bodies to no avail. It’s grotesque, decadent, there’s something of the paintings of Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo in it. It’s like the damp of the Scottish climate is seeping through the novel, the further it progresses the more the rot threatens to burst through the surface. It shares with Anne Enright’s recent The Wren, The Wren its multi-generational exorcism of the violence a charismatic man can do to women, but more brutal, less forgiving on its characters. I enjoyed O’Grady’s biting, ruthless characterisations, like Neve’s local friend Elixir, who Allison describes reminding her of “a brain-damaged ferret. Hyperactive and stupid”. No character is left unscathed, no dark thought unturned.
Gay rating: 2/5 for unspoken queer desire between two of the characters.
The Library Is Open 