Latest news with #VirginiaFeito
See - Sada Elbalad
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- See - Sada Elbalad
Maika Monroe to Star in Horror Thriller "Victorian Psycho"
Yara Sameh Maika Monroe has signed on to star in "Victorian Psycho", a psychological horror thriller that Zachary Wigon will direct for production and financing outfit Anton. Monroe joins Thomasin McKenzie (Last Night in Soho, JoJo Rabbit) in the production that previously had Margaret Qualley in the role of the governess. The project adapts the best-selling book by Virginia Feito, who also wrote the script. Set in 1858, the story centers on a governess named Winifred Notty, hiding her psychopathic tendencies while arriving to work at a remote gothic manor. But as the woman takes care of her charges, staff members begin to inexplicably disappear, and the owners of the estate begin to wonder, too late mind you, if their new governess is serving up a spoonful of sugar with a little arsenic on the side. Dan Kagan is producing the feature, marking it the third time, after the Neon breakout Longlegs and IFC's Azrael, the two have worked together. Sébastien Raybaud (Greenland: Migration, Greenland, The Night House) of Anton and Wigon are also producing in association with Anonymous Content. Nick Shumaker, Bard Dorros and Virginia Feito will executive produce. Anton is fully financing the film and is repping international rights. U.S. rights are co-represented by Anton, UTA Independent Film Group and CAA Media Finance. Production is set to begin in August of this year. Monroe has emerged to become one of the defining horror queens of the last two decades, building a resume of acclaimed and creepy films. She last starred opposite Nicolas Cage in last year's hit "Longlegs", one of the most successful horror hits of the last decade. Last fall, Monroe landed the lead role as the twisted nanny in 20th Century Studios' remake of "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". As a change of pace, before going to shoot "Victorian Psycho", she will shoot "Reminders of Him", Universal's adaptation of the best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover that is a story of motherhood and redemption. read more New Tourism Route To Launch in Old Cairo Ahmed El Sakka-Led Play 'Sayidati Al Jamila' to Be Staged in KSA on Dec. 6 Mandy Moore Joins Season 2 of "Dr. Death" Anthology Series Don't Miss These Movies at 44th Cairo Int'l Film Festival Today Amr Diab to Headline KSA's MDLBEAST Soundstorm 2022 Festival Arts & Culture Mai Omar Stuns in Latest Instagram Photos Arts & Culture "The Flash" to End with Season 9 Arts & Culture Ministry of Culture Organizes four day Children's Film Festival Arts & Culture Canadian PM wishes Muslims Eid-al-Adha News Egypt confirms denial of airspace access to US B-52 bombers Lifestyle Pistachio and Raspberry Cheesecake Domes Recipe News Ayat Khaddoura's Final Video Captures Bombardment of Beit Lahia News Australia Fines Telegram $600,000 Over Terrorism, Child Abuse Content Arts & Culture Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's $4.7M LA Home Burglarized Sports Former Al Zamalek Player Ibrahim Shika Passes away after Long Battle with Cancer Sports Neymar Announced for Brazil's Preliminary List for 2026 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers News Prime Minister Moustafa Madbouly Inaugurates Two Indian Companies Arts & Culture New Archaeological Discovery from 26th Dynasty Uncovered in Karnak Temple Business Fear & Greed Index Plummets to Lowest Level Ever Recorded amid Global Trade War
The Guardian
08-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘What's wrong with us? : Novelist Virginia Feito on our morbid obsession with true crime
Whatever people make of Virginia Feito's new book, a scabrous, morbidly funny murder ballad, they can't say they weren't warned. Thanks to several instances of real and imagined violence to men, women, children and babies – not to mention a deer, a duck and three whippets – Victorian Psycho lives up to its name, and to the first sentence of its prologue: 'Death everywhere.' 'It's not like a surprising twist that builds slowly over the pages,' the 36-year-old Spanish writer says of her second novel. 'You know where we're going from the very start.' Feito's debut, Mrs March – which explored a wealthy, Upper East Side woman's descent into suffocating paranoia – earned comparisons to Patricia Highsmith and Daphne du Maurier. Like its predecessor, Victorian Psycho is written in English and has already been snapped up for a screen adaptation. But it is, quite deliberately, a radically different book. The novel, whose title is a hat-tip to both Bret Easton Ellis and the 19th-century literature Feito grew up on, chronicles the homicidal thoughts and deeds of Winifred Notty, a governess who arrives at a remote country house in Yorkshire with rather more than the imparting of a traditional education in mind. 'Ever since I was little, I've loved gothic horror and I think there's a lot in the children's literature that I was reading from a very young age, like The Secret Garden,' says Feito in the flawless English that is the product of her time in an American school in Paris and a British school in Madrid. 'That book starts with a cholera epidemic that's killed everyone and Mary is alone in her bungalow in India, which is the most gothic thing I've ever read. And then there's a bit of gothic in Roald Dahl, who is a huge inspiration – especially his short stories.' Feito also loved the Brontës and Dickens, but with Victorian Psycho, she says, she wanted to creep into the darker recesses of the 19th century. So parts of the book are inspired by the crimes of killers such as Constance Kent, who slit the throat of her half-brother and threw his body down a privy, and Amelia Dyer, the 'baby farmer' thought to have murdered as many as 400 infants placed in her care. If her debut was a deeply disturbing satire on social conventions, Feito turns up the volume in the new novel, 'because it was fun, but also because they did drip belladonna into their eyeballs!' (A poisonous Victorian beauty hack to make your pupils dilate.) 'It's not that I was limiting myself with Mrs March, but this one felt like it had to be a rage,' says Feito. She notes that the new book's publication comes at a time when issues of female anger and physicality are being explored in films such as Titane and The Substance. Victorian Psycho plays with the era's demure Angel in the House stereotypes by giving the reader a protagonist without inhibitions, filters or limits. 'I guess I was kind of poking at that: what if the evil psychopath were female this time?' she says. 'What does that mean? And will readers justify her because she's female?' Feito wants to see how far she can push things before the reader begins to lose sympathy for the abused and vengeful Notty. Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Today's culture, she argues, seems to have lost its fear of psychopaths, with some – such as TV serial killer Dexter Morgan – even moving from antihero to hero. 'You root for them because you secretly want them to get revenge against the people who wronged them,' says Feito. 'I wanted to avoid that. Sure, you can feel empathy because Winifred has had an awful childhood, but I'm very explicit about the violence she's committing against children.' All of which raises a question: isn't she feeding the reader's appetite for Grand Guignol and depravity – only to reproach them for gobbling up all the gore? Feito laughs and pretends to scold one of her readers: 'You love it, you sick fuck!' But she admits she is equally guilty. 'I watch loads of true crime, freaking out over shows like Monster by Ryan Murphy. It's fun and I sit there cheering them on. But then I'm like: 'Eurrgh! What's wrong with us? Why are we so morbid? These are real people who died.'' Feito, who studied English and drama at Queen Mary University in London, says it was always inevitable that she would write in English rather than Spanish. The four years she spent at the American school when the family moved to Paris for her father's work proved formative. 'I was reading and writing and speaking at school and watching television in English because I didn't understand French very well,' she says. 'So I clung to English and I found that I took to it really, really well. You can almost add an '-ing' to anything and it'll exist, probably. And if not, nobody will be mad. It's so much more playful.' These days Feito says she is intimidated by her native tongue and doesn't understand its rules very well. She was delighted to turn down the offer of translating Mrs March into Spanish herself – 'I couldn't; I would have destroyed it' – and, besides, writing in English also offers the opportunity for some entertaining back and forth with her translator, Gemma Rovira. 'It's always fun to get these emails, like: 'When you're slashing the baby's neck, is it penetrating the skin or is it going around it?'' More seriously, it allows Feito to read her own work from a distance. 'It transforms it. It's another animal, so to speak,' she says. 'I see myself in there, but then there are other things that make me sound way smarter, which I appreciate very deeply.' With Mrs March being developed for the screen by Elisabeth Moss, and a film of Victorian Psycho, starring Margaret Qualley, also on the way, she has no regrets about her decision to leave a job in advertising a few years ago to write full time. Now she is thinking about her third novel, listening out for another arresting narrator. 'When I started Mrs March, I had a few other ideas that were much more developed and I knew where they were going,' she says. 'But I chose Mrs March because of the voice.' It was the same with Winifred. 'It came to me in the middle of the night and it's at the beginning of the book, where she says, 'My breasts jiggling in my corset.'' With that one line, Feito had her protagonist and knew exactly who she was. Given Victorian Psycho's body count, carnage and general air of barely corseted ultraviolence, does she see it as a feminist, revisionist take on the 19th-century novel? As a parody? A homage? 'I think it's all those things,' Feito says. 'It's an ode to the Victorian literature that I love so much but it's also subverting it. To be fair, there was a lot of death and violence and the grotesque in Dickens. But he ended it in a hopeful way and he didn't delve into the most graphic aspects because readers weren't really ready. But I think we're ready now.' Victorian Psycho is published by 4th Estate. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Yahoo
31-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
11 New Books to Read in February
Credit - Spend the shortest month of the year with a book that is worth your time. The best new books to read in February include best-seller Ali Hazelwood's latest romance, transgender activist Jennifer Finney Boylan's second memoir, and Virginia Feito's blood-soaked sophomore novel about a sociopathic governess. Get ready to fall in love with critic Sarah Chihaya's debut memoir, which looks at her obsession with books, or Cristina Rivera Garza's subversive thriller about a poetry-obsessed serial killer. Allegra Goodman uses the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, a French noblewoman who was abandoned in 16th century Canada, as inspiration for her new novel, Isola. And Rich Benjamin's debut memoir is a deeply reported love letter to his mom, the daughter of Haitian politician Daniel Fignolé. Here, the 11 new books you should read in February. In 2003, Jennifer Finney Boylan released her groundbreaking first memoir She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders, which chronicled the earliest years of her gender transition. More than two decades later, she is once again reflecting on what it means to be a trans person in America. With Cleavage, her new memoir-in-essays, she examines the growing gender divide at this critical juncture in the U.S. She reflects on the differences between manhood and womanhood as she has experienced them since her transition in 2000, as well as the experiences of those who exist outside the binary, in hopes of narrowing the gap between us all. Buy Now: Cleavage on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble In 2019, essayist Sarah Chihaya had a nervous breakdown that coincided with a bout of the titular anxiety disorder, which causes someone to have an intense and irrational fear of books and writing. With her memoir, Chihaya explores her lifelong struggle with mental illness and obsession with books—specifically those she refers to as 'Life Ruiners,' the literature that became integral to her being, sometimes in a negative way. She shares how those books, which range from Anne of Green Gables to The Last Samurai, fueled her descent into madness — and how they helped her find her way out. Buy Now: Bibliophobia on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Virginia Feito's grisly follow-up to her 2021 debut, Mrs. March, centers on a sociopathic English governess with a taste for vengeance. When Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House, she plans to do nothing more than teach the children how to read and write. But as Christmas rolls around, she succumbs to her bloodthirsty ways in this tongue-in-cheek thriller set to become an A24 film starring The Substance's Margaret Qualley. Buy Now: Victorian Psycho on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Three years after the release of her best-selling novel, Sam, Allegra Goodman returns with a thrilling tale of resilience inspired by the true story of Marguerite de La Rocque, the 16th-century French noblewoman who was abandoned on a deserted island. In Isola, Marguerite's jealous guardian accuses her of having an affair with his servant. He dumps her and her lover on a hidden isle off the coast of Canada that is full of polar bears and little else. In order to survive, Marguerite must do what she's never had to before: fend for herself. Buy Now: Isola on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Take a dive into the Deep End, Ali Hazelwood's steamy new romance set in the world of collegiate swimming. Scarlett Vandermeer is a talented Stanford diver who is recovering from an injury that almost ended her career and far too busy studying to become a doctor to even think about dating. That is, until she meets Lukas Blomqvist, a popular competitive swimmer and her best friend's former crush. They couldn't be more different on paper—he's the life of the party, she's more likely to be found in the library—but they both share an interest in BDSM. When the two embark upon a mutually beneficial and consensual sexual relationship, Scarlett questions whether she's looking for more than just a good time. Buy Now: Deep End on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble With his debut essay collection, Pure Innocent Fun, Ira Madison III takes the pop culture that made him who he is today very seriously. Across 16 essays, the critic, TV writer, and host of the Keep It podcast writes about the effect Oprah's weight-loss odyssey, Jennifer Hudson's American Idol loss, and his genuine love of Coldplay had on him while growing up as a gay Black man in Milwaukee. As he gives new consideration to the cultural touchstones of his youth, he explores how each helped him find his critical voice as an adult. Buy Now: Pure Innocent Fun on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble In his debut memoir, Talk to Me, cultural critic Rich Benjamin unearths the secrets of his family's hidden past in hopes of better understanding his mother. In 1957, a coup ended the presidency of his grandfather, the Haitian folk hero Daniel Fignolé, and shattered the lives of the entire family. But no one, including Benjamin's mom, an advocate for children who was often cold to her own son, ever talked about the events of that time. Through intense research, Benjamin looks to understand the far-reaching consequences of the devastating political event. Buy Now: Talk to Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Alligator Tears, the follow-up to Edgar Gomez's 2022 memoir, High-Risk Homesexual, offers a look at the author's experience growing up poor, queer, and Latinx in Florida. Across 10 essays, he chronicles years of working thankless jobs, including a stint as a flip-flop salesman, and the difficult choices his family had to make to get by, including whether or not to call an ambulance they knew they couldn't afford. Throughout the book, he also shares how he was able to crawl his way out of poverty through a mix of hard, often low-paying work and more than a few well-timed scams. Buy Now: Alligator Tears on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Kelsey McKinney, the former host of the Normal Gossip podcast, uses her latest book to explore society's obsession with hearsay — and why that's not such a bad thing. Well, until it is. You Didn't Hear This From Me, a mix of cultural criticism, modern history, and personal memoir, breaks down the differences between harmless rumors and outright lies in order to show the important role gossip plays in human connection. Buy Now: You Didn't Hear This From Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble With The World After Gaza, award-winning journalist Pankaj Mishra looks to reevaluate, recontextualize, and reframe the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. He does this by taking a closer look at how the Holocaust became a way for the U.S. and other Western nations to justify Israel's actions. From there, Mishra explores how the selective reading of global history is hardening us to the tragedies happening not only in Gaza, but also all around the world. Buy Now: The World After Gaza on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cristina Rivera Garza's 2007 lyrical novel, newly translated from the original Spanish by Robin Myers and Sarah Booker, is a serial killer tale with a twist. Death Takes Me begins with a literature professor finding the body of a mutilated man only to discover that she has an odd connection to the crime scene. The police find lines of poetry from the late real-life Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, who she has studied for years. As more bodies pile up, the professor is enlisted to help catch the poetry-obsessed murderer. But when she starts receiving cryptic notes from the mysterious killer, she begins to worry that she could be the next victim. Buy Now: Death Takes Me on Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble Contact us at letters@
