The Woman was published by 47North in 2011, co-written with filmmaker Lucky McKee. The novel is a sequel to Offspring (2009), which was itself a sequel to Off Season — the feral cannibal clan from Ketchum’s first novel has been mostly destroyed, but one woman survives, living alone in the Maine wilderness. Christopher Cleek, a country lawyer and family patriarch, discovers her and captures her, chaining her in his fruit cellar.
Cleek tells his family that they are going to “civilize” the woman — teach her to speak, to dress, to behave. His wife and children comply with varying degrees of enthusiasm and terror. But the novel’s true subject is not the wild woman’s savagery but Cleek’s: he is a domestic tyrant whose veneer of respectability conceals systematic abuse of his wife and children. The wild woman in the cellar is more honest than the civilized man who holds the key.
Ketchum and McKee developed the story simultaneously as a novel and a film (which premiered at Sundance 2011, where a viewer fainted during the screening and another delivered a tirade against the filmmakers). The dual development gives the novel a cinematic economy — scenes are short, visual, and precisely blocked — while allowing for the interiority that the film medium cannot provide.
The novel’s final act — which I will not spoil — reverses the power dynamic in a manner that is both cathartic and deeply unsettling, leaving the reader uncertain about which character’s “civilization” was more dangerous.
Collecting The Woman
First edition (47North, Seattle, 2011): Trade paperback.
Market values:
- First edition, fine: $10–$25
- Signed: $20–$50