The Maidens

Convinced Edward Fosca is guilty of murder, Mariana resolves to comb through everything that has happened to uncover some incriminating information.

One evening in October, a year after her husband’s death, 36-year-old Mariana sits on the floor of her house with his personal effects. She knows that by holding on to his things and her memories, she risks falling into “pathological mourning”—depression—but life has felt colorless and painful since his death. She prefers to remain cocooned in her home and pain.

The following night, Mariana receives a phone call from her niece, Zoe, who is studying at Cambridge.

Mariana grew up in Athens in the shadow of both the Parthenon and her dictatorial father, a self-made man. Her mother died shortly after Mariana was born, and she and her much older sister were never close. Wary of groups, Mariana frequently found herself isolated and lonely, but this has benefited her work as a group therapist because she is good at being “invisible.”

Zoe’s call arrives on an unseasonably warm evening after Mariana has held a group therapy session in her London home. Henry, an especially troubled patient, had disrupted the meeting.