My Name Is Mary Sutherland

A psychological horror novella. Cover art by Vincent Chong.

From an unspecified institution where she has been for three years, seventeen year old Mary Sutherland tells her story to a television crew. Through her narrative and letters to her father, who never replies, we learn of a contented life that is turned upside down when her mother dies suddenly and Martin, her father, remarries with indecent haste. He is besotted with the elegant and calculating Tiffany, and Mary becomes marginalized for the twin crimes of being fat and having bad hair.

They move from Liverpool to an old house near Chester that ‘Dad’s wife’ — Mary never refers to her by name — wants to renovate. Mary has an empathy with the property and even with the incumbent rats; however with the birth of baby Rosie, she feels, like the rats and the ill-fitting doors and windows, she is surplus to requirement. She can do nothing right, her new school offers little comfort and she has no friends. Only Rosie, who makes no demands on her and doesn’t judge her because of her glasses or frizzy hair, provides some form of unconditional human contact.

My Name Is Mary Sutherland is a tale of parental neglect, the psychological abuse of a minor, and the terrible price that is ultimately paid.