#Blogtour #Review - The Fascination by Essie Fox

The Fascination
Essie Fox
Orenda Books, 22 June 2023 
Available as: HB, 305pp, audio, e  
Source: Advance copy
ISBN(HB): 9781914585524

I'm grateful to Karen at Orenda Books for sending me a copy of The Fascination to consider for review, and to Anne for inviting me to join the book's blogtour.

The Victorian era. Where can one even begin in drawing out its themes, its achievements, its darknesses? Perhaps Charles Dickens, in the famous opening to A Tale of Two Cities, sums it up well by listing a series of contradictions (the best of times, the worst of times...) Yes, I know Dickens was writing about pre-Victorian France, not Victorian England, but aren't all writers working with an eye to their own time? 

One might certainly think so in Essie Fox's new novel which, to me, casts a cool eye over an age of reason, progress and confidence: but also one of superstition, fear and vast social inequality. Highlighting the outsiders on the fringes of society - the travellers, the fairground folk, the "freaks" who offend against a rigid idea of nomality and the misfits who don't have a place in the highly structured social order - The Fascination shows both the freedoms such people could enjoy and the price that might be demanded.

The story is told from two viewpoints - those of Keziah and of Theo. Keziah, with her twin sister Tilly, suffers early in the story when her mother dies. Her father, a rather feckless drunk, takes up a new way of life as a travelling peddler of quack medicines, using the two (identical, except that Tilly stopped growing at the age of five) as part of his sales pitch. 

Theo is the orphaned grandson of dissolute Lord Seabrook, who keeps a private collection of horror and curiosities which both fascinate and repel the boy.

Essie Fox

Both the sisters and Theo are eventually cast out - the girls sold at the fair in a scene reminiscent of The Mayor of Casterbridge, and Theo dispensed with when Seabrook takes up with a new woman who gives him a son and heir. One of the joys to me of this book is Fox's willingness to use such tropes (banishment, inheritance) of Victorian melodrama - and, as the story develops, gothic - but in an intelligent and knowing way that supports, rather than distracting from, the story. So, the shop and museum of horrors owned by Dr Summerwell, where Theo eventually finds employment, is not just a grotesque flourish but has a deep connection with events here, suggesting a hidden side to Victorian society within which all kinds of dark things can flourish.

I wouldn't though want to overemphasise that darkness. Fox's villains are grotesque, but the main characters are an intelligent, resourceful, motivated and above all, loving, group of outcasts who live in a little community in Chiswick. The bustling London world may shun them - except when it wants a "freak" as the centrepiece to a pantomime or to perform at a fair - but they have a respect for each other and a sense of interdependence and trust that is heartwarming. Nor are they afraid to challenge the conventions or double standards of that wider society - Keziah for example taking great pleasure from a copy of Fanny Hill that comes into her hands.

The Fascination is a story which explores Victorian society in some depth, but more importantly it's a book that tells a vivid and engaging story with plenty of shocks and surprises - and which is written with great heart and soul. I'd strongly recommend it.

For more information about The Fascination, see the publisher's website here - and of course the other stops on the blogtour which you can see listed on the poster below. 

You can buy The Fascination from your local high street bookshop or online from Bookshop UK, Hive Books,  Blackwell's, Foyle's, WH Smith, Waterstones or Amazon.