I Am Her Revenge

Gr 9 Up—The circumstances under which Vivian comes to The Madigan School are anything but typical. Arriving at the school in the British countryside midyear, she takes the place of a young woman reputed to have been fraternizing with a member of the faculty, a charge that few seem to believe, including the student's roommate. Nonetheless, Mother needs Vivian to attend this school and Mother is accustomed to getting what she wants. For her part, Vivian is accustomed to bending to her mother's every whim, or suffering very real consequences for her disobedience. She has been bred to take on any role needed to further Mother's plans for revenge, but Vivian's task at Madigan is to cultivate a plot ending in the ultimate humiliation of the man who had betrayed Mother years before. While playing out this plan upon the man's son, also a student at Madigan, Vivian begins to unravel quite a bit of her mother's secret history. This journey of discovery will prove to be the undoing of each character's precariously balanced life. Moore leads readers through carefully constructed paths, set on the English moors, in her debut novel. The tightly concocted plotlines and clearly drawn characters are delivered in digestible pieces. The themes reinforce the idea that love does not have to be the undoing of any young female character.