“A bloody delight. There isn’t another book like it. Pohlig has crafted a wonder.”
—Kristen Arnett
new york times bestselling author of mostly dead things
A fierce blend of Gothic ghost story and Victorian novel of manners that’s also pitch perfect for our current cultural moment
Order your copy now!
So begins The Unsuitable, a novel of hand-wringing, corset-tightening suspense and deliciously dark humor, narrated by Iseult Wince, a spinster at the tender age of twenty-eight. She’s been at acrimonious odds with her father from the very beginning of her life, and one of the few comforts of her exiled, estranged existence is that her dead mother lives on, a constant presence that dwells in the scar on Iseult’s neck.
As her mother alternates between loving coos and ferocious screeching over Iseult’s decisions, her more single-minded father will stop at nothing to marry Iseult off—and one must begin to wonder at his reasons. Meanwhile, Iseult’s only potential suitor has his own peculiar eccentricity—and, far more suspiciously, he seems to actually like her.
As competing tensions build and spark and this haunting, singular story careens toward a terrifying climax, Iseult is forced to make a choice: Should she listen to her mother, her closest companion? Or should she try to exorcise the malevolent spirit that haunts her and set the course of her own life, no matter the cost?
“Molly Pohlig has written a true stunner with The Unsuitable. A novel that takes the body and upends it, all the while focused on the how our interior worlds are oftentimes prolifically shaped by our parentage. On the sentence level it is both gorgeous and messy; a bloody delight. There isn't another book like it. Pohlig has crafted a wonder.”
—Kristen Arnett, New York Times bestselling author of Mostly Dead Things
“The Unsuitable is a gruesome, stabby, wincing book about the ways in which women are influenced, hindered, hurt, and taught to hurt themselves. There is a rebellious glee in Iseult's response to the powers that be, and great humor amidst the glittering darkness. This is a comedy of manners marvelously turned upside down.”
—Sharma Shields, author of The Sasquatch Hunter’s Almanac and The Cassandra
“The Unsuitable is a weird neo-Victorian fever-dream with a prickly, haunted heroine and an ending you won't see coming.”
—Maggie Mitchell, author of Pretty Is
“The Unsuitable is vivid, bloody, and above all, wholly singular. It is impossible to not feel for Iseult as she struggles for a glimmer of independence that both the living and dead are hellbent on smudging out. With this debut, Molly Pohlig establishes herself as a startling force.”
—Madeline Stevens, author of Devotion
