Description

A spellbinding, darkly poetic literary novel that plunges us into the inner life of America’s first female serial killer

‘This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read’ Karl Ove Knausgaard

Seventeen-year-old Brynhild is in a fever – she can’t quiet the screaming world inside her. When an intense affair ends brutally, she flees Norway for America at the end of the nineteenth century in search of a new life. Changing her name first to Bella, later to Belle, she is driven from any potential refuge by an unbearable tension that won’t let her keep still. As Belle seeks release in a series of men, her yearning for an all-consuming love erupts into violence.

In this breathtaking novel, Victoria Kielland imagines her way into the tumultuous inner life of the Norwegian woman who became Belle Gunness – America’s first known female serial killer. Written in prose of wild, visceral beauty, My Men is a radically empathetic and disquieting portrait of a woman capable of ecstatic love and gruesome cruelty.

Publisher Review

‘The intense, progressively feverish quality of the novel is far closer to the visceral interiority of Clarice Lispector or Jean Rhys than anything by Jo Nesbo or Stieg Larsson… A singular novel of unusual power from a fearless and remarkable writer’ – Carys Davies

‘This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read’ – Karl Ove Knausgaard

‘An extraordinary, visceral fictionalisation of Belle’s life… Belle’s story is not one of a police procedural or thriller… The prose flies and flays, is porous and illuminating’ – Irish Times

‘An extraordinary portrait of the inner turmoil and ecstasy of the woman widely regarded to be America’s first female serial killer’ – Marie Claire

‘My Men, superbly translated by Damion Searls, is a portrait of a woman trying, and failing, to escape her punishing trajectory. Bit by bit, day by day, we see, and come to understand, what has made Belle Gunness a killer’ – New York Times