Femme Feral

Beckbessinger follows Girls of Little Hope with a darkly entertaining feminist satire that finds 44-year-old Londoner Ellie experiencing hot flashes, brain fog, and mysterious new body hair. A diagnosis of perimenopause adds stress to her life as she oversees the launch of a mental health app that delivers soothing meditation recordings. She’s stunned when she’s passed over for promotion and incensed when the “literal clown” of a new CEO takes credit for her ideas for the app. As the same time, she must care for the people around her, including her daughter, who has anorexia; her father-in-law, who has dementia; and her out-of-work brother. She pushes down her frustration and rage in the face of it all until the night of a full moon when she sprouts fangs, claws, and fur. In a parallel plot, 82-year-old curmudgeon Brenda finds her cat Melek—“the last living creature on this earth who’d have noticed if [she] was gone”—torn apart by the teeth of a huge animal and sets out to catch his killer. Despite a somewhat slow start, this tale of women’s rage against societal marginalization builds to a satisfying and bloody end, with Beckbessinger using the tropes of werewolf horror to provide her tough-as-nails heroines with a sense of power, retribution, and gratification. This has bite. (May.)