Mrs England

By: Stacey Halls

Narrated by: Imogen Wilde

Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Women's Prize Futures Award

A Waterstones Best Book of the Year

Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize

Longlisted for the Portico Prize

From the best-selling author of The Familiars and The Foundling comes Stacey Halls' most compelling and ambitious novel to date.

'Something's not right here.'

I was aware of Mr Booth's eyes on me, and he seemed to hold his breath. 'What do you mean?'

'In the house. With the family.'

West Yorkshire, 1904. When newly graduated nurse Ruby May takes a position looking after the children of Charles and Lilian England, a wealthy couple from a powerful dynasty of mill owners, she hopes it will be the fresh start she needs. But as she adapts to life at the isolated Hardcastle House, it becomes clear there's something not quite right about the beautiful, mysterious Mrs England.

Distant and withdrawn, Lilian shows little interest in her children or charming husband, and is far from the 'angel of the house' Ruby was expecting. As the warm, vivacious Charles welcomes Ruby into the family, a series of strange events forces her to question everything she thought she knew. Ostracised by the servants and feeling increasingly uneasy, Ruby must face her demons in order to prevent history from repeating itself. After all, there's no such thing as the perfect family—and she should know.

Simmering with slow-burning menace, Mrs England is a portrait of an Edwardian marriage, weaving an enthralling story of men and women, power and control, courage, truth and the very darkest deception. Set against the atmospheric West Yorkshire landscape, Stacey Halls' third novel proves her one of the most exciting and compelling new storytellers of our times.

*Sunday Times bestseller June 2021 and January 2022*

*Winner of Women's Prize for Fiction x Good Housekeeping Futures award—Good Housekeeping 14 Oct 2022*

©2021 Stacey Halls (P)2021 Bonnier Books UK

Critic reviews

"The new Hilary Mantel." (Cosmopolitan)

"Outstanding. Haunting, compelling, atmospheric." (Emma Stonex, best-selling author of The Lamplighters)

"Highly atmospheric and tense." (Richard Osman, The Observer)

Inappropriate title

I’m not sure why this book was titled “Mrs. England“. This would imply an overall focus on that character, when actually, the focus is on the governess. It seemed to me that several characters and parallels to the storyline were not really played out fully. I will not give more detail here so as not to spoil it for others.

As for the narration, it was okay, but quite depressing in terms of tone of voice. But maybe that is appropriate due to the working class status of the protagonist and general mood of the book. There was not much variation in timbre that would have reflected the age or gender of the characters. Being American myself, I won’t comment much on the accents, although there were certainly some northern accents in evidence. I couldn’t conjecture about any of the London accents, though.