Lycanthropy and the modern woman: Femme Feral, by Sam Beckbessinger

Lycanthropy and the modern woman: Femme Feral, by Sam Beckbessinger

No spoilers

Ellie’s got far too much on her plate.

She’s putting in extra hours at work, gunning for a long-overdue promotion at the tech firm she’s worked at for years. When she’s not saving the company from imploding, she’s balancing the demands of her oblivious husband and his aging, live-in father. Or worrying about her troubled daughter, away at university. Or trying to get on top of a To Do list that seems to be growing longer by the minute.

There’s also all the strange new symptoms she’s logging in her perimenopause app: hot flushes, insomnia, forgetfulness, violent rage, inexplicable bloodstains, extra hair, extra teeth. She’s noticed a new 28-day cycle – not her period, but something else that aligns with the waxing and waning of the moon. Her GP tells her it’s just “the change”, so Ellie tries breathing exercises, gratitude, taking on more responsibility at work – anything but acknowledge that she’s just really, really angry.

Sam Beckbessinger’s upcoming novel Femme Feral is fun, witty, entertaining, and deeply relatable. It’s also a genuine howl with plenty to say about (were)womanhood in the modern world.

The novel opens with Ellie, bloody and confused, stumbling to her feet after being knocked down by a bicycle. Mentally adding ‘replace now-broken phone screen’ to her ever-growing List, she returns to her primary motivation: get to work on time. The AI-optimized meditation app sector isn’t going to disrupt itself.

The novel’s scathing observations on the tech industry, generative AI, and the medical industry’s utter disinterest in cis “women’s health” – let alone healthcare for trans people – are reminiscent of the razor-sharp diatribes on modern society in Sheena Patel’s excellent 2022 novel I’m A Fan.

As Beckbessinger points out, the central joke of Femme Feral is the fact that modern medicine knows as much about perimenopause as it does about lycanthropy. I read this shortly after finishing Caroline Criado-Perez’s 2019 Invisible Women, which pulls together statistics on gender bias in big data collection. There is clearly widespread apathy, despite the fact that the menopause affects 100% of cis women who live long enough.

Interposed with Ellie’s harried voice is that of crotchety battleaxe Brenda, who is on a mission to solve a mysterious and disturbing spate of cat killings in her neighbourhood. On the other side of the menopause, Brenda’s made to feel invisible by the world around her. Indignation and fury are burdens women of all stripes are expected to bear.

Reading this made me think about poltergeists. Teenage girls are often the locus of such supernatural activity, the malevolent spirits said to be the overwhelming emotions of pubescent girls made manifest. Symptoms like loud bangs, objects flying through the air, strange smells, and doors slamming shut are connected with the frustrations and miseries of being trapped in a body which is rapidly changing into something that patriarchy will inevitably claim. Femme Feral offers an interesting parallel for women at another stage in life who are desperate to re-orientate that anger out into the world instead of back into their own bodies.

Menopause as “the change” is made lupine literal in Femme Feral, but the metaphorical wolf within also represents the toxic, poisonous effects of repressed female anger. Women who are burned out, dismissed, talked over; women who feel forced to swallow their grief and anger at the injustice of it all.

Femme Feral is not so much a fantasy of revenge but of unbridled, bloody rage. It calls for women to stop turning their rightful fury at the world inwards, poisoning their bodies, their happiness, their lives.

Sometimes, the novel argues, you’ve got the right to get really fucking angry.