Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Nobody thinks they will become that woman until it happens.
The Harpy
What you need to know before your trail
Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, he wants her to know.
The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.
As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return.
Travel Guide
Travel to a university town in The Harpy
The setting in the novel isn’t important to the storyline and it could be either Oxford of Cambridge since it’s a university town. This is novel about a marriage, a woman hell bent on revenge. The title and kind of woman it’s about is included in this one paragraph:
“When I was a child, there was a book – out of print now, expensive – about a unicorn who went into the sea and became a narwhal. The book had beautiful illustrations, dark blue seas, peach-pale evening skies. But the picture I remembered best was of the harpies, dark shadows, birds with women’s faces, who came down to torture the unicorn, to make him suffer. I asked my mother what a harpy was, and she told me: they punish men for the things they do.”
BookTrail Boarding Pass: The Harpy
Destination/location: Oxford or Cambridge Author/guide:Megan Hunter Departure Time: 2000s
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