With Total Impunity

By Jacqueline Harpman

A gothic novel in the grand tradition of the nineteenth century--set in '90s Belgium--by the bestselling author of I Who Have Never Known Men.

An architect returning home from a business trip is stranded when his car breaks down. It is midnight. In the distance he sees a wrought-iron gate, and behind it, a beautiful, crumbling mansion that seems to belong to a different time. For a steep fee, he is given room and board by its strange inhabitants: a coterie of women, penniless and aristocratic, the last holdouts of a long line.

The formidable and fascinating women of La Digui re--three generations of mothers, daughters, and sisters unattached to anyone but themselves--have day jobs and study for exams. They have sold their Louis XVI furniture and sleep on IKEA beds, in pursuit of their single imperative: to maintain their closely guarded estate, now on the brink of final dissolution. But they do not despair; when the architect arrives, they have just set in motion a Jamesian marriage plot. Circumstances collude to keep the architect at La Digui re for longer than anticipated, and our Lockwoodian narrator readily gives in--their concerns are now his.

This is a story told with the psychotherapist's appetite for discord and the novelist's for motive. There is a way out; it will not be difficult. They have only to think of it, and, with total impunity, to act.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HBJHBH75
• ISBN13: 9798893380989
• Release Date: May 2027
• Publisher: Transit Books
• Length: 208 Pages