Butcher

In this harrowing story based on authentic historical documents, we follow the career of Dr. Silas Weir, “Father of Gyno-Psychiatry,” as he ascends from professional anonymity to national renown. Humiliated by a procedure gone terribly wrong, Weir is forced to take a position at the New Jersey Asylum for Female Lunatics, where he reigns. There, he is allowed to continue his practice, unchecked for decades, making a name for himself by focusing on women who have been neglected by the state—women he subjects to the most grotesque modes of experimentation. As he begins to establish himself as a pioneer of nineteenth-century surgery, Weir’s ambition is fueled by his obsessive fascination with a young Irish indentured servant named Brigit, who becomes not only Weir’s primary experimental subject, but also the agent of his destruction.

Narrated by Silas Weir’s eldest son, who has repudiated his father’s brutal legacy, Butcher is a unique blend of fiction and fact, a nightmare voyage through the darkest regions of the American psyche conjoined, in its startling conclusion, with unexpected romance. Once again, Joyce Carol Oates has written a spellbinding novel confirming her position as one of our celebrated American visionaries of the imagination.

'Butcher is vivid and compellingly drawn, its prose scalpel-sharp … Oates remains a master storyteller with her finger on the pulse of humanity, forever alive to its moral failures and flaw' iNews

‘A blood-soaked, gothic nightmare … A triumph of style and brio… More than being just a medical thriller, it’s closer in temperament to works of gothic body horror, from Frankenstein through to the contemporary work of Mariana Enríquez’ Financial Times

‘Examines the agency girls and women have – or don't have – over their own bodies amid the current political debates around reproductive rights in a post-Roe v. Wade world’ Daily Mail

'Sounds like the perfect American novel, delving deep into the horrors of invention' Lit Hub, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2024'

‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

'Delightfully disturbing' iNews

'A master storyteller' The Times

‘The writing faithfully mimics 19th-century texts. Littered with italics and euphemisms, it gives a sense of both authenticity and distance’ Sophie Mackintosh, Literary Review

Praise for Joyce Carol Oates:

‘One of the greatest — and most productive — living American writers’ Financial Times

'Oates is a massive literary heavyweight, and many earnestly believe she could knock the other contenders for the title of Great American Novelist' Guardian

‘One of the greatest writers of our time’ John Gardner, author of Grendel

‘[A] notoriously prolific chronicler of America’s cracked, calamitous heart’ Esquire

‘America’s preeminent fiction writer’ The New Yorker

‘Simply the most consistently inventive, brilliant, curious and creative writer going, as far as I’m concerned’ Gillian Flynn, author of Gone Girl

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award and the PEN / Malamud Award, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Carthage, A Book of American Martyrs and Hazards of Time Travel. She is Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

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