The Maidens
The Maidens
By: Alex Michaelides
[Nominated for ‘Best Mystery/Thriller’ category of the 2021 Goodreads Choice Awards Reading Challenge]
“We all secretly hope that tragedy will only ever happen to other people. But Marianna knew, sooner or later, it happens to you.”
Just as with Michaelides’ debut novel, The Silent Patient, this book has some polarizing views. People either loved the thriller and his nod to Agatha Christie’s red herrings, or people felt it had too many suspects and was too unbelievable.
I read the book very fast. It was a quick and very suspenseful read and I was engaged throughout the whole story. When I finished I felt like I liked it. I had my suspicions about how he was going to reveal the killer but the motive behind the killings was the main twist and I didn’t have that figured out at all!
I realized it’s one of those books that you enjoy but when you start talking to others or reading other reviews, you realize they make some good points and you feel like the book is a little less praiseworthy because of them.
Brief Plot Summary
Marianna, still grieving her husband who drowned a year ago, is a group therapist. She gets a phone call from her orphaned niece, Zoe, whom they had taken in as their own, and is studying at Cambridge. Zoe’s roommate, Tara, has been brutally murdered.
Marianna rushes to her niece’s side and the two become convinced that the killer is the Greek tragedies professor, Edward Fosca. When the police think Marianna is just weirdly prejudiced against him and don’t take her theories seriously— after all, Fosca has an alibi— Marianna takes it upon herself to prove that Fosca murdered her niece’s friend.
But the danger isn’t gone. Over the next few days two more girls are found similarly murdered in a ritualistic way, each receiving Greek postcards with lines from Greek plays talking about death and sacrifices. Marianna and Zoe both receive one and they must decide whether to get back to the safety of London or continue their quest for justice.
I think we all know what they choose.
Sidenote- the book is called The Maidens because all of the murdered girls were part of a secret (not-so-secret) ‘club’ of some kind that flocked around their tutor, Fosca, who had named them his maidens. And they just so happened to also be Fosca’s alibi for Tara’s murder.
The book alternates between Marianna and excerpts from a letter or journal entry supposedly from the killer that sporadically gives us some clues as to who the killer is.
It’s All Greek to Me
As with Michaelides’ first novel, he incorporates Greek mythology into this book as well.
Marianna’s husband, Sebastian, died when they were on holiday to a Greek island. They were trying to grow their family and needed some relaxation. They picnicked at a Greek temple dedicated to the goddess of harvest and life, Demeter, and her daughter, Persephone, the goddess of death. Marianna says a quick prayer to the statues in hopes they will bless them with health and life. But she regrets this when instead of life, more death enters her life. Sebastian disappears that day. His body washes up on the shore days later.
These two goddesses, Demeter and Persephone, come back into the story as Marianna digs deeper into the teachings of Fosca’s class:
Persephone means ‘maiden.’
One of the quotes in the Greek postcards found among the victims’ belongings reads, “In order to defeat the enemy and save the city… a maiden must be sacrificed— a maiden of noble birth. Sacrificed to Persephone.”
Is it coincidence? Does Fosca know what happened to her and Sebastian? Is this all in her head? What is the connection?
Surprise Appearance
Fans of The Silent Patient will be curious to know that there is a small crossover of characters in this story. Readers wonder if Michaelides’ third book might be a greater crossover in storyline… only time will tell.
Analysis and Questions
**The section of this review will contain spoilers, scroll down to the Conclusion section to skip the spoilers**
I like that Michaelides includes red herrings. But I agree that it might be too many if the potential suspects get no resolution as to why they ‘fit the profile.’
For example, I thought for sure it would be Fred. Especially since the ‘killer’s letter’ contained the statement that the writer had a ‘premonition.’ That’s not a common thing for people to say and Fred was very verbal about his premonitions. Plus he had some weird obsession with Marianna and happened to be on the train with her?
My theory is that it was Fred who wrote the letter, Zoe made up the story about Sebastian, and Fred and Zoe had a connection. I don’t think I’m right based on how it ends. But if I’m wrong, I don’t feel like we got a good enough explanation for Fred’s role in all of it or some of the things he said/knew and the ways he was acting.
I found the inclusion of Henry to be a little extra. He is the ‘problem’ person in her group therapy back in London who is possessive of her and stalks her at home, saying he ‘needs her.’ He tells her later that Marianna ‘sacrificed him’ by leaving London for so long— that she wasn’t there for him. This is connected to the ‘letter’ sections of the story where the writer is angry that his mother sacrifices him by not stopping the torment he experienced from his father.
Henry shows up at Cambridge with a knife and threatens Marianna. This felt jarring and random. Especially because we don’t hear anything more about it. We just hear that Marianna realizes she needs to handle that matter and get it under control when she gets back. I didn’t feel like this red herring was particularly effective or necessary.
A few other things that I question or that went unexplained were:
What happened to the other pages of the letter? Marianna finds only part of it in Zoe’s room, but there was some missing.
How did Marianna not realize what was happening between Sebastian and Zoe? Especially as a therapist you would think she would recognize something off about their relationship. I think Michaelides tries to account for this by including the thread in the story of Marianna’s relationship with her own father and how she was blinded by love for him and thought his abuse was what love was.
Her therapist tells her: “At best, let’s call it a desire to be loved. At worst, it’s a pathological attachment to a narcissistic man: a melting pot of gratitude, fear, expectation, and dutiful obedience that has nothing to do with love in the true sense of the word. You don’t love him. Nor do you know or love yourself.”
She had a hard time criticizing her father, so it would make sense that she wouldn’t recognize Sebastian for what he was because she looked at him as she did her father. I’m still processing if that’s a satisfying enough answer.Marianna finds these Greek postcards but she doesn’t turn them into the police right away? They seem pretty significant because it talks about sacrifice and the murders were ritualistic. Sure the police told her to stop interfering with the investigation but I feel like the connection to the postcards would be hard to deny.
Also Marianna is convinced that it’s Fosca who committed the murders, yet she agrees to go eat dinner with him— in his rooms— without telling anyone. And also she drinks several things while with him. This seems like Stupid 101. You’re going to drink something a suspected killer gives you?? C’mon lady!
The letter references that the writer feels ‘split’ like he wants the evil part of him to go away. This seems like a significant aspect of the story and determining who the killer is, but I felt like they never fleshed that out. We never see this ‘splitness’ in action. I guess it was just included to create the backstory for what corrupted the person and caused them to do evil things?
What we find out about Zoe does seem a little far-fetched. That she would be capable of what she did seems abrupt and shocking.
Apparently the references to Persephone and the day Sebastian died is coincidental because we never find out why Fosca was teaching those things at that time. It seems weird that there was no different connection to the murders. Just some random Greek stuff?
There were two other quotes near the beginning of the book that I found foreboding and seemed to be somewhat foreshadowing. I think these quotes would be interesting to consider if you were reading this book as part of a book club.
“She was still in love and didn’t know what to do with all this love of hers. There was so much of it, and it was so messy: leaking, spilling, tumbling out of her, like stuffing falling out of an old rag doll that was coming apart at the seams.”
The words ‘messy,’ ‘leaking,’ ‘spilling,’ and ‘old rag doll’ that’s ‘coming apart’ all seem negative. Not like the bursting and overflowing of intimate and intense love but a damaged, dysfunctional, and out of control kind of love. The negative connotations here are a sign of their relationship.
“They had forgotten to bring a knife—so Sebastian smashed the watermelon against a rock like a skull, breaking it into bits. They ate the sweet flesh, spitting out the bony seeds.”
This is an ominous description of eating a watermelon. A smashed skull, eating flesh, and bony seeds. The fact that Sebastian did the smashing is telling, but also Marianna participated in the aftermath so that’s something interesting to reflect on. Michaelides intentionally wrote this scene with this grotesque sense of murder in the simple act of eating the fruit so it seems significant to understanding Marianna and Sebastian’s relationship and what was about to happen.
Conclusion
So where does all of this leave us? Like I said, I can understand the questions or comments from people who gave the book 1-2 star reviews. But personally, as I was reading the story, I enjoyed it. I wanted to figure it out and felt like it wasn’t annoyingly predictable.
Sure there were questions and unexplained things. It’s not a perfect book. But if you like whodunnits and thrillers, I think you’ll enjoy it.
There is always some sort of suspending reality for the sake of a story that happens. I don’t feel like what Michaelides wrote goes out of acceptable bounds. And the parts that were left unanswered or explained may be something people like about the books.
I’m discovering more and more that I’m the type of person who likes answers, not open-ended books and movies. Tell me what happened! But my husband likes some mystery and open endings, so if that’s you then you may like it even more than I did!
I definitely don’t think it deserves 1-2 star ratings. Probably floating around the 3.5-4.5 mark depending on your preferences and how many of these kinds of books you read.
Parental Advisory: There are some f-words (mostly from the youths), a brief scene of a tryst between a student and an adult but nothing graphic, and the main twist is a bit disturbing but it’s not described in detail.
And of course… the section I reserve for new British words that I learned while reading this book:
freshers- British slang for students at first year of university (there’s no slang term for the other years, I checked.)
bedder- housekeeper at Cambridge University (can you imagine going to college and having someone who comes and makes your bed and empties your trash? my fresher roommate probably would have appreciated that for my side of our room…)
high table- the table in the dining hall on a platform reserved for important people
buttery- a room where food is stored and sold to students (not just butter. that would be a lot of butter.)
staying in college- the phrasing of this one is weird. Someone asks Marianna where she is staying that night. Instead of saying she’s ‘staying at the college’ or ‘in the college,’ they don’t use the word ‘the.’ I just think that’s strange.
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