#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.

#Review - The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

The Whispering Muse
Laura Purcell
Bloomsbury Raven, 2 February 2023
Available as: HB, 293pp, audio, e
Source: Advance e-copy
ISBN(HB): 9781526627186

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance e-copy of The Whispering Muse via Netgalley to consider for review.

The Whispering Muse is an absolutely top-rate historical horror which makes some trenchant points about women's lives being bent out of shape by the society - and especially the men - around them. As I've come to expect from Purcell, we're given nuanced, layered horror, deeply coiled around human lives and circumstances - but also, moments of shocking, scary climax as those human lives crumple and break. It's a heady mixture, making every page both a 'must read' and a 'dare I read?'

Jenny is trying to hold together her family - comprising only her younger brothers and sisters, as their parents are both dead - and is desperate for any work she can get. An offer of a role as a dresser at the Mercury Theatre comes as welcome news, but it will soon bring Jenny face to face with divided loyalties, the prospect of ruin, and indeed utter terror when the company embark on a production of 'The Scottish Play'.

All Jenny's problems trace back, in one way or another, to the men around her. Formerly a lady's maid, she lost her place because of the feckless behaviour of one of those men. Another of them, the manager of the theatre. seems to be taking too close an interest in one of the actresses, but inevitably things go wrong and he demands Jenny's help in managing the situation. Meanwhile, his wife also expects Jenny to break up the relationship (or else). And just when it seems things can't get any worse, another man from Jenny's past turns up threatening to break up her little family.

I loved just how complicated things became for Jenny, but particularly her relationship with that actress - Lilith - to whom she's appointed as dresser. The two women have very different outlooks - Lilith daringly Bohemian, ambitious, willing to flout Victorian morality (but, if she wants her career to progress, does she have any choice?) Jenny more conventional, perhaps, as shown when she's told to turn round three times, spit, and swear because she said 'Macbeth' - and she can't bring herself to do it.

The most moving moments of the book, in counterpoint to the gothic horror, are those when these two women are learning to trust one another,  to get to know each other.  That doesn't always turn out well, indeed little in this book turns out well, but possibilities open then, experiences are shared and alternative futures open up.

Those moments of respite never last long, though - there is a drumbeat in The Whispering Muse and it is a drumbeat of terror, horror stalking the theatre and its unfortunate cast and crew. What seems at the start like theatrical whimsy and self-indulgence - I thought of the Blackadder parody of that spitting-and-turning round thing - comes back to claim a price, as events grow progressively darker. That darkness is only pointed up by a sort of disjointed reaction from the wider world to the horror taking place. There is a prurient interest in what happens (not going to spell out what that is because spoilers) but a distinct lack of concern, of empathy, with those affected by it. (An attitude I think sadly true to life, not only of the Victorian era but of those since and up to the present day - it would be easy to imagine the cursed Lilith racking up huge numbers of social media followers, rather than stage door Johnnies, all to abandon her as she crashed and burned).

In the end though, and despite The Whispering Muse deploying quite the tide of gory horror (it features productions of both Faust - in two different versions - and MacBeth) I think it's actually in may respects  hopeful book, both showing ways in which solidarity and fellowship can defeat, or at least elude, power, and celebrating human companionship and love.

For more information about The Whispering Muse, see the publisher's website here.

Review - I Am Dust by Louise Beech

I Am Dust
Louise Beech
Orenda Books, 16 April 2020
Available as: PB, 344pp, e
Read as: Advance review copy PB
ISBN: 9781913193218

I'm grateful to Orenda Books for a free advance copy of I Am Dust to consider for review.

Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return...

There are books I read for review because they catch my eye and I think they might interest.

There are books I read for review because I've read the author before and I think I'll like them.

Then... then there are Louise Beech books - which means I know I'll be in for a good time (if a heart-wringing, emotionally involving one).

I Am Dust is, of course, no exception. Operating on two parallel timelines, we see Chloe, a thirtysomething adult, working as an usher at the Dean Wilson theatre in Hull in 2019. We also see Chloe, with her friends Jess and Ryan, rehearsing in the summer of 2005 for a youth theatre production of Macbeth - and dabbling with a Ouija board.

In 2019, the Dean Wilson is preparing for a revival of the iconic musical Dust, considered cursed by some since the lead actress was killed during its premiere run 20 years before at the same theatre. The  murder was never solved, and understandably, speculation runs wild - especially Eoin the part of Chloe's mate Chester.

In 2005, relations between the three friends become more and more intense. Chloe fancies Jess. Jess has eyes only for Ryan. Ryan - well, Ryan is basically in love with himself. The instigator of the Ouija sessions, which take place after hours on the Macbeth stage - among the witches props, royal robes and daggers of the Scottish Play - Ryan has some objective of his own. There is something he wants, something he knows, something he needs. Chloe has always considered herself sensitive in these matters - what might the pressure of the sessions drive her to?

I loved the awkward, triangular relationship between Chloe, Jess and Ryan, the balance always shifting in response to the lurching dynamics of the teenagers, and to external pressures. Beech writes, I think, with great insight when she draws these characters: they ring true, and one worries for them - not only in 2005, but in the future, where Chloe seems alone. What has become of Jess and Ryan?

What, for that matter, has become of Chloe? Part of the lure of this book is the slow drip of revelation about her life then, and now. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say a lot, but it's clear that she has been deeply affected by something. She has been self-harming. She can't remember all of what went before - so we as readers are in some ways ahead of her when strange things start to happen at the theatre. There's a tension hanging over this book, a genuine sense of menace, whether from the supernatural or from the unresolved dynamics of fourteen years ago. It's exacerbated, somehow, by the way Chloe seems to stand in the spotlight - her mum and dad appear and are mentioned, but never named. She seems to have answers but not to know them, if that makes sense.

And all the while she is weaving her own story, writing a script, that seems both a commentary on what she's been through and a way out of her own life.

I just loved this brooding, claustrophobic novel. In Beech's last, Call Me Star Girl, most of the action during police during one torrid night at a local radio station (mentioned briefly at the start of I Am Dust). Here it's more spread out, the action taking place over several months in each timeline, and the locations are less constrained physically but - as theatres - perhaps even more freighted with hopes, dreams and fears: dangerous spaces, which have to be treated with care, according to established rules (like never mentioning the name of the Scottish Play). Ryan lays down rules for the Ouija sessions too, but the three friends don't pay much heed to them and there's a sense from the start of them playing with fire...

I Am Dust is at the same time a sensitive character study, a heart-stopping, spooky tale and a scorching page turner that will have you up past midnight to complete it (if you're brave enough).

For more information about the book see the publisher's webpage here. If you haven't read anything by Louise before (WHY?) check out my reviews of The Mountain in my Shoe, Maria in the Moon, The Lion Tamer who Lost, and Call me Star Girl.

If you can buy I am Dust from your local bookshop - many are now operating mail order - please do, they need as much support as possible right now. Alternatively, Hive Books are now taking orders again, or you can buy from Blackwell's, Foyle's, Waterstones or Amazon.