Delivery charges may apply.Marisa and Jake have not long been a couple when they move in together and decide to start trying for a baby. To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at. Magpie by Elizabeth Day is published by 4th Estate (£14.99). Writers as dissimilar as Deborah Moggach (To Have And To Hold) and Elizabeth Taylor (The Wedding Group) have addressed, respectively, the themes of surrogacy and of dysfunctional families, and while Day does not specifically explore the full complexity of surrogacy as a feminist/political issue – it is not that type of book – her depiction of obsession and of the sometimes disastrous psychological effects arising from unfulfilled needs is highly plausible. The book is not without its moments of absurdity and caustic wit. On the surface light, bright and breezy, invoking the perfect lives Marisa and Kate both yearn for, it is capable of packing considerable punches: a graphic account of rape the utter misery attached to the inability to have a child and the accompanying feelings of failure the desperate unease of not trusting one’s partner and the stifling nature of a toxic parental relationship. After settling into its initial disturbing narrative, the central surprise is a reversal akin to that employed by Lauren Groff in Fates and Furies or Sarah Waters in Fingersmith. Magpie – that sense of usurpation in the title is appropriate – is a clever novel. Why is Kate so intimate with Jake, and why so familiar with the house? Until Kate arrives as a lodger, and Marisa’s sense of self begins to erode. Apart from Jake’s frosty and controlling mother, Annabelle, who calls unexpectedly one day when Jake is out, all seems ideal. Jake wants a family, and so does Marisa – acutely so, as her own mother left with Marisa’s baby sister when she was seven. A children’s illustrator, she even has room there to have her own studio. Within three months, Marisa has left her small rented north London flat and moved into Jake’s spacious place in Battersea. This romantic cliche has a double-edged meaning, and warning signs flash as the twists and turns of Day’s plot unfold.
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”.
Marisa has found the man of her dreams online: Jake. I nfertility, 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.
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