First published 1992
John Selby Watson attends church on a Sunday afternoon, then returns home to his wife after nearly three decades of marriage. The Victorian clergyman lives a seemingly ordinary life, but beneath the surface, darker currents flow through the Watson household. Their marriage has progressed through years of accumulated resentments, small cruelties, and quiet desperation. Watson's inner world churns with motives and feelings that history failed to record fully. The tension between husband and wife builds toward an explosive moment when Watson brutally bludgeons his wife to death. The murder sends shockwaves through Victorian England and becomes a sensation in the national press. Watson faces trial for his crime while the public struggles to understand how a man of the cloth could commit such violence. Bainbridge explores the psychological landscape that led to this domestic catastrophe, revealing the particular madness and banal perversities that destroyed the Watson marriage.
Genres: domestic-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, crime, psychological-thriller, 19th-century
Vibes: dark, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: unreliable-narrator
Setting: England, Victorian-England
Period: 19th-Century
256 pages · Paperback · PENGUIN PUTNAM * TRADE
Content warnings: domestic-violence, murder, violence