Marisa moves into a seemingly perfect house with a seemingly perfect man – but a surprise is in store
Infertility, surrogacy, sexual assault, mental illness and a lot of desirable housing stock might seem too much for one book, but with her new novel, Magpie, Elizabeth Day pulls off a polished and creepy thriller which probes at the heart of what it means to be able to conceive a child – or not.
Marisa has found the man of her dreams online: Jake. At their first physical meeting, “she felt a crackle of energy, a fusion of some sort, as if two molecules had collided and meshed and sparked a new thing”. This romantic cliche has a double-edged meaning, and warning signs flash as the twists and turns of Day’s plot unfold. Within three months, Marisa has left her small rented north London flat and moved into Jake’s spacious place in Battersea. A children’s illustrator, she even has room there to have her own studio. Jake wants a family, and so does Marisa – acutely so, as her own mother left with Marisa’s baby sister when she was seven. Apart from Jake’s frosty and controlling mother, Annabelle, who calls unexpectedly one day when Jake is out, all seems ideal. Until Kate arrives as a lodger, and Marisa’s sense of self begins to erode. Why is Kate so intimate with Jake, and why so familiar with the house?
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