THUNDERHEAD by Miranda Darling

Winona Dalloway is a romance writer, tapping out the kind of tales that nourish the kishkes as much as the soul. On the surface, she lives the upper middle class dream: professional success, husband and kids, dinner parties, frivolous chatter at private school pick-ups. It is, however, a rose-tinted facade. Pretty early on in Miranda Darling’s chillingly sophisticated novella, it’s clear that things are pretty messed up. Voices collide in her head. Controlling, vaguely threatening phone messages arrive from her husband. Her calendar fills with an impossible number of tasks, and she is constantly writing unsettling lists. Winona is facing a private life of horror.

Thunderhead is an innovative, smartly hewn dissection of a mother’s mental load, as compounded by a coercive, controlling relationship. It is dark - at times very dark - and yet Winona remains a voice of dignified resistance in the face of terrible circumstance. Darling writes her story with a ferocious sensitivity, while also giving us a portrait of toxic masculinity free from cheap cliche. Though a little uneven at times, it all builds to a thunderous (pun intended) denouement that you’re unlikely to forget anytime soon.

Thunderhead by Miranda Darling
Scribe, 2024
141 pages