Standalone historical with a scientist interested in electricity and spiritualism, plus a half-Romany steward who the scientist kinda blackmails into Standalone historical with a scientist interested in electricity and spiritualism, plus a half-Romany steward who the scientist kinda blackmails into helping with his spiritualist experiments.
I loved the setting, especially the porousness of what we (or at least some of us) now consider the entirely opposed fields of actual science and woo-woo nonsense. It's fascinating to me how people approached belief and theories and finding explanations for phenomena, and that did involve a lot of going down what now look like blind alleys. In particular there's a tiny scene where Nick plays with magnets for the first time in his life, and feels the way they repel each other, and you have to reflect how very much that would seem like magic if someone didn't explain it.
The prevalent racism against Roma (I'd say of the time if it wasn't equally prevalent now) is very front and centre; the book makes a stringent effort to show Ward not falling into the trap of assuming Nick must be able to see ghosts because of his "gypsy blood", although we are told he did see a ghost once, as indeed did Ward. (I still don't know how anyone abbreviates Edward to Ward because in my dialect it's pronounced ED-w'd, so I was calling him w'd in my head, which was irritating [of] me.)
My issue was really that Nick has a couple of major and genuine beefs with Ward that never really get dug out and resolved. Ward blackmails him into agreeing to the experiments, and then later on flexes his superior status and education in a really obnoxious way, and Nick is rightfully angry but basically lets both go. We see Ward's remorse in both his POV and his actions, and the acknowledgement of his privilege blinkers throughout is really good, but I wanted more thrashing out. Perhaps that's unrealistic, and the more honest ending is he's learning and changing in a slow and incremental way. ...more
Overview of the British taste for true crime and crime novels. I say British: Worsley makes a big deal of how it's a super special national obsession Overview of the British taste for true crime and crime novels. I say British: Worsley makes a big deal of how it's a super special national obsession while not actually drawing comparisons with any other countries' taste for true crime and detective novels to indicate what makes it 'British'.
It's also a bit sloppy with a taste for random assertions and odd turns of phrase. My copy is dog eared with ??? notes. Points for the reference to 'William Coleridge', though at least it's not paired with Samuel Taylor Wordsworth. And mostly it just rubbed me the wrong way with the extremely dismissive attitude towards the subject matter. Worsley makes it clear that melodrama was shit and we clever moderns would now see it as absurd, public murder obsessions were creepy, most of the Golden Age writers weren't very good, etc etc, like we have to be told that she's more intellectual than this nonsense.
A frothy and entirely ahistorical histrom. Present tense, and dialogue is extremely modern American English. You mind this or you don't.
Chacun a son A frothy and entirely ahistorical histrom. Present tense, and dialogue is extremely modern American English. You mind this or you don't.
Chacun a son gout. If these things don't bother you, it's got lots of froth and romp and a parent-trap plotline that looked fun; I just didn't get on with it as I was hoping to, which I regret. Hey ho, not everything is for me.
I do need to comment on the absolutely bewildering names: Mrs Demeroven? Lord Psoris? Lord Frightan? Mrs Stelm? Lord Bletchle? I suppose it's in the Victorian authorial tradition of filling books with weird-ass names as per Trollope and Thackeray; I found it distracting, but there you go. ...more
A hugely involving take on Frankenstein, in which Mary (descendant of Victor) and her husband attempt to recreate the famous experiment, only they're A hugely involving take on Frankenstein, in which Mary (descendant of Victor) and her husband attempt to recreate the famous experiment, only they're palaeontologists, so this time they're trying to make a pleiosaur. Frankenstein meets Jurassic Park. Amazing. (It's not really that, I'm just astonished the publishers didn't slap on that tagline.)
Really, it's very much about: being a woman scientist in the Victorian period, being a woman scientist at all, being a woman, with the expectations of motherhood and wifeness, being pleasant, always pleasant, smoothing over situations, self effacement, never having anger or pride. And very much about the endless capacity of men to be a massive selfish disappointment and then be completely baffled when called out for what they did. Mary is a ferociously angry, bitter woman choking on the injustice of it all, and this makes for a pretty emotional, cathartic read. With hand-stitched dinosaur. Plus the author tackles endemic racism inclusing 'scientific' racism, chronic pain, and child loss, and there's a low-key sapphic romance starting, so there is a lot going on here.
I enjoyed it very much. The writing is great and has a strong period feel, Mary is a fascinating character, making no effort to be 'likeable', and Henry depressingly plausible in that he's not even a villain, just a typical selfish man. It starts a little bit slowly, with a lot of childhood, in the way of Victorian novels, but stick with it: it's a really entertaining tale. ...more
The cover is staggeringly good. God that's lovely. I preordered on the basis of that plus histrom that gets outside English balls (as it were).
A debuThe cover is staggeringly good. God that's lovely. I preordered on the basis of that plus histrom that gets outside English balls (as it were).
A debut and it does show a bit. The leads are both charming--heroine is a firebrand, with immense dignity, hero is kind hearted and works to be aware of his privilege, and their romance is sweet. The plot is ingeniously conceived but a tad clunky in the execution.
I was a bit sorry how much of the book was set in England rather than Egypt, in large part because the Egyptian passages were really lively and evocative, where the England bits didn't quite ring true to me and didn't feel as secure in the writing. This is not really a fair thing to criticise a book for ("I wanted it to be a different book!" ffs get a grip) but the Egyptian parts were so great, with real consciousness of colonialism and the multicultural world, and I just wanted to know so much more and see so much more of that, and the characters operating in that milieu. I hope the author writes more. And I hope every cover she gets is this good, because cracking job. However, slap on the wrist to the editor who let the reference to Pakistan through, and that's not even the first time I've seen this in a Victorian-set romance. Come on, guys. ...more
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