The Turn

“One of the most exciting new voices in Gothic horror.” —Macabre Daily

“Henry James with fangs” —Ginger Nuts of Horror

“The sort of book that burrows into your consciousness, a meditation of sorts on the writing life, on family, on sexual obsession and the cult of higher education faculty. How does that all come together in so short a tome? With beauty and horror, of course.” —Westword

“A smart, controlled, and highly effective piece of storytelling.” —Bloody Flicks

“A short, sharp, deliciously written gothic potboiler that simmers along right up until the moment it explodes in your face; an excellent demonstration of how the classic gothic can teach us modern-day lessons about family, power dynamics and motherhood, and why it remains a terrible idea to ever accept a nanny position anywhere.” —FanFiAddict

“What starts as a psychological thriller successfully twists into something that will appeal to readers of more monstrous Gothic tales.” —The Ancillary Review of Books

“Feder takes the classic Gothic figure of the governess from Jane Eyre and The Turn of the Screw, brings her into 2020 and turns her into the centre of a story about power, obsession and how far we can trust our own perception. Reviews particularly praised the atmosphere and the way the novel becomes increasingly unsettling, while one of the most common criticisms was that its 136 pages simply were not enough.” —Vogue Adria

A Gothic governess novella for the twenty-first century, The Turn follows Baxter, a creative writing student turned live-in nanny. As a pandemic, wildfires, and memories of a fraught love affair flicker at the edges of her circumscribed reality, Baxter struggles to make sense of an increasingly threatening domestic sphere and to protect herself and the children in her care. Initially conceived as a serialized story in the nineteenth-century tradition, and drawing on novellas including Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, Mary Shelley’s Mathilda, and Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman, or Maria, The Turn navigates issues including sexual obsession, reproductive justice, and the cult of academic celebrity to ask what bonds of love endure even when the world itself ceases to make sense. 

The Turn is out now from TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press! Check out an excerpt, interview, and podcast chat at The Colorado Sun, this interview in Vector, this interview in Macabre Daily, and The Turn on Avidly’s First Sentence Fridays feature (with a cute picture of my dog!).