These days, I’m not looking for a multi-book series or a 500-page commitment. I want a quick novel that grabs me from the first page. One I can pick up, get lost in, and finish before the day gets away from me. Mad Mabel by Sally Hepworth is exactly that.
The story follows Elsie Mabel Fitzpatrick, an 81-year-old with a sharp tongue who is fiercely independent and lives quietly in a Melbourne suburb. But Elsie was not always Elsie. Decades ago, she was “Mad Mabel Waller,” the youngest person in Australia to be convicted of murder. So, when a neighbor turns up dead, the old rumors come back fast. Was Mabel responsible again? Or did everyone simply decide they already knew what she was capable of?
The book moves between Mabel’s present and flashbacks to her childhood. Little by little, we see the difference between the woman people think they know and the woman she was forced to become.
That difference is where the book’s big idea lives: Sanity is subjective. Mabel is defined by other people throughout the novel. “Mad Mabel” is a label that follows her for decades, long after the events that earned it. But how much does a label like that really tell us about who she is?
Since I always bring my book reviews back to campus, here is where I think this applies to us. We do this to people all the time. We take what we see, fill in the blanks, and build a story about someone from our own point of view. But someone else’s version of you is not automatically your truth. No one can fully know what’s going on inside your head, what you’ve been through, or why you made the choices you did.
That idea matters even more when Mabel’s “bosom friend,” Daphne, enters the story. I loved their friendship because of the comfort it gave Mabel. There is something special about having a person who feels yours completely. Someone who knows you, understands you, and makes you feel less alone. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I had not found my own “bosom friend” here. Shoutout TK!
And then we learn that Daphne is not exactly who we thought.
I will not spoil the twist, but Hepworth handles it beautifully. Once the truth comes out, you start to rethink Mabel’s memories and how she has lived her life. What struck me most is that Mabel’s need for that friendship was still very real. Even if Daphne was not what we first believed, the comfort and companionship Mabel felt, and the sense of being understood, were real to her.
Perhaps that is why I found this book so cozy. It sounds ridiculous to call a story about murder, rumors of murder, and a very questionable past comforting. But Mad Mabel is really about home and the people who make it one. Over time, Mabel’s relationships with her neighbors on Kenny Lane matter more to her than the reputation she’s carried for most of her life. Family is not always the people you’re born into. Sometimes it’s the neighbor who will not stop knocking on your door, the kid whom you babysit on occasion, or simply the people who make you feel like you belong.
That’s what makes Mad Mabel more than a murder mystery. Hepworth gives us just enough information to make every explanation feel possible, while the back-and-forth between Mabel’s past and present slowly changes how we interpret what we have already read. Even the speculation surrounding her alleged crimes leaves you wondering whether you are uncovering the truth or simply adopting another person’s version of it.
In the end, the real mystery of Mad Mabel is not whether Mabel was mad. It’s whether anyone else ever had the right to decide who she was.
As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
