Furious Violet (2026) is Sarai Walker’s third novel, and it’s very different from Dietland (2015) and The Cherry Robbers (2022), but excellent in its own way. I’d probably consider it a literary horror/ thriller, featuring a nearly-fifty year old main character, Violet “West” Shelley. West is a true crime writer, traveling on her own across the country, interviewing victims for her books detailing serial killers. She is the daughter of Juliet Bellwood, who killed herself when West was only a few months old, and who the author admits is inspired by Sylvia Plath.
West was raised by her uncle, a history professor, and has tried to stay away from the literary cult of her mother’s life, a group of academics and hangers-on that she and her uncle call “The Furies.” She describes herself as a “Gen X Miss Marple with a touch of Joan Jett,” wearing floral dresses with tights and Doc Martens (which reminded me of the character of Plum from Dietland, an inspiration for my own style).
As the book opens, West is nearly done with her research on a raping and murdering serial killer who was never found, and she has the anxiety and bad dreams to show it. She’s headed to her uncle’s house in Colorado for the summer, as a retreat while he is traveling and so she can get the book done. Very soon, she starts getting strange notes left on her car, and it turns out that the college in her hometown is hosting a Bellwood studies symposium that coincides with her visit. The strange things continue, even after she has a security system installed at her uncle’s house.
It is a wild, claustrophobic ride of a book! West figures out that the person who is following her must believe that she is their mother, but the thing is — she never had any kids. With the help of some friends, she gets close to the answers, but all is not revealed until the very end. I loved it! And I consider it fat positive, as Walker doesn’t describe West’s body size until the very end, when her stalker hurls the word “fat” at her. There’s generational trauma, positive portrayal of therapy, and a fat character whose story isn’t about her body size at all–what I especially loved was that Walker lets the reader identify with West regardless of their own body size.
I highly recommend it.
