The world has always been full of death. It’s an unavoidable tenet of existence, yet one that society has almost become numb to. Death is inevitable, which means that people can either confront it head-on or hide behind endless coping mechanisms and means of distraction. Virginia Feito’s Victorian Psycho is not just obsessed with our relationship with death, but the schism that’s felt when it bubbles up to the surface, when it’s least expected. Set in 1850s England, Feito’s gothic psychological thriller gets into the head of Winifred Notty, the newest governess at Ensor House, who is tasked to lighten the Pounds family’s load.
Notty indoctrinates herself into this opulent family, while dark, disturbing impulses fill her head and threaten to spill out into the world. Victorian Psycho is Jane Austen by way of Brett Easton Ellis. It begins with its twisted tendencies suppressed and internalized until they culminate in an explosive rampage. It’s a strong – albeit flawed – sophomore novel from Feito that shows her progress as a growing voice in psychological thriller and horror literature.
It’s very apt that Victorian Psycho begins with a beautiful preface on death’s ingrained nature in society, both subtly and overtly, and how it’s the true currency that spins the world round. Feito routinely contrasts ornate pomp and circumstance against gothic death and decay. Death is culture, as far as Victorian Psycho is concerned. There’s an especially evocative spectacle that’s described where Londoners fight over mummy corpses like it’s a Black Friday sale, unconcerned if they happen to maim the bodies or tear off limbs in the process. Death’s commodification is reduced to a status symbol and fashionable centerpiece.
This is the perfect context for Winnifred Notty, someone who is filled with darkness and evil that, as much as she tries, seeps out of her like viscous sludge. Notty sees death everywhere, and it acts as her grounding North Star. Victorian Psycho features an adage about cuckoos and how their chicks “kill as soon as they are born.” This essentially becomes Notty’s mission statement through this infiltrative exercise.
It’s clear from the jump that Notty’s torturous past has more than a little to do with her placement at Ensor House. Victorian Psycho never folds into a full-on mystery. However, Feito gets a lot of mileage out of what’s not said about Notty as the audience attempts to fill in the blanks. She’s a powder keg of pent-up revenge that’s ready to blow, and the reader is just waiting to see how big the blast radius will be. There’s a grim, foreboding nature to Notty’s narration as she teases the death and tragedy to come, like she’s a messenger of darkness who is fulfilling her poisonous destiny.
Feito’s novel leans into tongue-in-cheek satire that pokes fun at how well Notty passes as high society, only for it to be more of a commentary on her attempts to pass as a caring human and not a murderous sociopath. As Victorian Psycho’s title suggests, there’s a very Patrick Bateman-esque arrogance and disdain for humanity in everything that Notty does. Also, much like American Psycho before it, Notty is a fascinating unreliable narrator who is constantly taken over by flights of fatalistic fancy as both she and the reader are left to parse out where the truth lies.
Victorian Psycho keeps the audience guessing over how truly lost Notty may be or if she’s just looking for excuses to disguise viciousness as mercy. This cascades into an unnerving performance that highlights the increasingly ill-fitting human suit that she uses to masquerade as normalcy. One of the more successful aspects of Feito’s text is how it subtly normalizes such ridiculous, brutal ideas so that you don’t even flinch when Notty reveals another horrendous omission.
Feito’s prose has such a knack for making things – and more importantly, people – come across as extremely gross. At times, they feel like the exaggerated caricatures you’d find in a Roald Dahl story. This spills over into such disdain for nearly everyone in the Pounds household. Victorian Psycho has a lot of fun with the many housekeepers, staff, and insular hierarchy that exists within the Ensor house. It plays with these expectations and finds ways to push them to new places. Class and privilege are deeply baked into Victorian Psycho’s storytelling.
It builds to a really wild, cathartic Christmastime conclusion that brings everything together in a frenetic, debaucherous fever pitch. That being said, it does feel like the whole novel is just a setup for this wild final spectacle and biding its time, to some extent, before it reaches this raw release. At just over 200 pages, Victorian Psycho makes for a brisk read. It still gets a little monotonous and repetitive as Notty cycles through many of the same motions. The final act also feels rather rushed, and it’s an instance of a novel that could stand to be a little longer.
Victorian Psycho already has a cinematic adaptation on the way starring Maika Monroe, and this feels like a story that is actually better suited as a movie that can streamline the madness into a tighter, more visually chaotic package. The novel is a dark, disgusting satire of life, death, status, and everything in between. It’s not necessarily one that necessitates a re-read, but it’s still full of powerful passages that will stick with the audience.
There’s a lot of meat on Victorian Psycho’s bones, even if some of it is rotten. It’s no American Psycho, but it’s an encouraging evolution of Virginia Feito’s storytelling.
The paperback edition of Victorian Psycho publishes on May 5, 2026.
