Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, focused on books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. Today, I’m blogging about Louis Bayard’s 2024 novel, The Wildes, which delves into celebrated Victorian writer Oscar Wilde’s conviction for “gross indecency” for his romantic relationship with a man, Lord Alfred Douglas, and the impact of the scandal on his wife and children.
The novel is structured in five acts of uneven length. The first, longest, and, for me, the most compelling act charts the breakdown of the Wildes’ marriage as Oscar’s wife, Constance, becomes aware of the nature of his relationship with Lord Alfred during a family trip to the Norfolk countryside. In the second act, Constance and her young sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, are in Italy, escaping the press attention surrounding Oscar’s trial and subsequent imprisonment. By the third act (which is very different in tone from the rest of the book), Cyril is fighting in World War One. In the fourth, Vyvyan, now grown, encounters Lord Alfred in London. And in the fifth, Vyvyan imagines an alternate reality where his parents’ marriage survived Oscar’s infidelity and Constance accepts her husband’s relationship with Lord Alfred.
Looking at the novel’s reviews, the fifth act has been the most divisive, but for me it worked well as the fantasy of a child still impacted by the breakup of his parents’ relationship, even after he is grown. The whole novel seemed like an examination of how a specific event/moment can become a shared family trauma. In the world of the Wildes, as presented in this novel, “Norfolk” becomes almost a code word for everything that followed, and exact details of the trip, which would have otherwise seemed inconsequential, are seared into their collective memories.
This isn’t the book I’d recommend if you are looking to learn about the Wilde scandal for the first time, but if you know the history and are interested in diving deeper, there’s a lot to enjoy. Just be warned: if your own family has dealt with divorce, incarceration, or another episode of extreme upheaval, this one may hit close to home.
I’m back with a review of yet another novel written in the twenty-first century, but set in the nineteenth, as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices blog series. This time we’re in 1876 San Francisco for Frog Music by Emma Donoghue, whose 2016 novel, The Wonder, I reviewed back in 2018.
Frog Music really drives home the idea that truth can be stranger than fiction when it comes to writing historical novels. I had no idea how well-researched the book was and how deeply Donoghue had engaged with the historical record until I read her concluding author’s note.
Not only is it true that SF was suffering a sweltering summer, along with a smallpox epidemic, in 1876, but the murder the book opens with was a real crime. Jenny Bonnet was a cross-dressing, unicycle-pedaling frog catcher, who had frequent run-ins with the city police. But the question is: who shot her dead?
In Donoghue’s novel, Blanche Beunon, the dancer and sex worker who was with Bonnet when she died, is the character who sets out to uncover the truth. But Blanche has problems of her own to deal with—an angry erstwhile lover, disagreements with the madam at her brothel, and (most heart wrenchingly) trying to locate her missing baby. We alternate between sections focused on Blanche’s investigations and earlier scenes depicting the meeting and relationship between Blanche and Jenny, as Donoghue skillfully unravels what happened and, crucially, why.
If you’re a fan of trigger warnings for fiction, please note that this novel would require many. Donoghue’s brand of historical fiction is gritty, peopled by characters who are of their time when it comes to their illnesses, hygiene, and more. Frog Music details child neglect and animal cruelty, and the novel also contains sex scenes that walk the line between consensual and non-consensual.
But that isn’t to say that the novel is entirely dark. Music, as you might imagine from the title, is a powerful through line in the book and the snippets of nineteenth-century lyrics that pepper Jenny and Blanche’s interactions paint a vibrant picture of 1870s West Coast culture. My favorite thing was how transported I felt to nineteenth-century San Francisco, where different immigrant groups were meeting and forming a new, composite culture.
Overall, I’d recommend Frog Music to readers who a) won’t get queasy at realistic depictions of nineteenth-century life, b) have an interest in queer relationships in the period, and c) love SF.
Welcome back to my long-running Neo-Victorian Voices series, in which I review books set in the nineteenth century but published in the twenty-first. Today, I’m blogging about Ami McKay’s 2016 novel, The Witches of New York, which combines three of my favorite things—the 1800s, NYC, and a little dash of magic.
Beatrice Dunn arrives in New York in 1880 on the same day as the great obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, which is nearing the end of its long journey to Central Park. Beatrice is seeking employment in a teashop after reading an advertisement that warns, “those averse to magic need not apply.” She already has a keen interest in the occult, but it’s only after touching the city’s Egyptian wonder that she starts to see and interact with spirits, making her of great interest to Adelaide and Eleanor, the teashop’s proprietors, to alienist Dr. Brody, who takes a scientific approach to the supernatural, and to a preacher and a demon, both of whom wish her ill.
The novel’s best moments are those where Beatrice interacts with ghosts—when she sees a small boy playing around his mother in the teashop, before realizing he’s dead, and when she scribes messages from spirits using Dr. Brody’s scientific instrument—and the portions dealing with the history of New York (e.g., the lunatic asylum on Blackwell’s Island and a terrible hotel fire). I also enjoyed the inclusion of the raven familiar, Perdu, and the newspaper articles, journal entries, and grimoire excerpts that head each chapter, painting a charming picture of McKay’s magical world.
Less satisfying was how overstuffed the novel felt at times, with some plot lines (e.g., the relationship between Adelaide and her ghost mother, Eleanor’s affair with a married woman, the threat posed by the woman who deformed Adelaide’s face, and the conflict between the demon Malphas and the witches of the novel’s title) feeling unresolved. I went into the novel expecting it to be a standalone, but it became clear early that I was reading setup for future books, and I was unsurprised to learn that a second novel, Half Spent Was the Night, followed in 2018. I also would have loved to better understand the theological underpinnings of McKay’s magic system. The proponents of Christianity in the novel are uniformly terrible, but this is a world where demons roam. Is there a God? And, if so, what does He/She/They think about witchcraft?
Overall, I’d recommend the book to those who enjoy their dark magic on the lighter side and to readers for whom a series is a bonus, rather than detracting from their enjoyment. What novel(s) should I read next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want future blog posts delivered straight to your email inbox? Sign up here.
As 2023 comes to a close, it’s time to review what I read in the last year. How did my habits change compared to 2022 and what themes emerged from the books that made it from my TBR and onto my nightstand? As usual, I tracked my progress via Goodreads and set myself a challenge on the platform, so to keep up with what I’m reading in 2024, make sure you connect with me there.
In 2023, I read 50 books (compared to 60 in both 2021 and 2022). At this slower pace, I had to average ~50 pages a day, which was still at times a tough ask, but achievable during what has been a hectic year.
I leaned towards selecting books by female writers—38 of the books I read this year were by women and 12 were by men.
Novels made up the bulk of my reading material—they accounted for 36 out of 50 reads. But I also read 10 works of non-fiction, three plays/collections of plays, and one collection of short stories.
As you might expect from a writer of historical fiction, the genre remains my favorite—19 of the books I read in 2023 fit into this category. But I also read 5 novels with strong fantasy/speculative elements and 4 that dealt with mystery and/or crime.
Nine of the authors I read this year are known to me personally. Congratulations again to Hope C. Tarr, Nancy Bilyeau, and Nicole Evelina for the publication of their 2023 novels and to Richard Huddleson for his dramatic translation.
The top theme that emerged from my reading this year was romantic and/or intense relationships between women characters. Yiyun Li's The Book of Goose (2022), Julia Fine's Maddalena and the Dark (2023), Gina Marie Guadagnino's The Parting Glass (2019), and Emily M. Danforth's The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012) all fit into this category.
I also read two Bronte-related books (Lucasta Miller’s The Bronte Myth (2001) and Rachel Cantor’s Half-Life of a Stolen Sister (2023)), and two ballet-related books (Adrienne Sharp’s White Swan, Black Swan: Stories (2002) and Alice Robb’s Don’t Think, Dear: One Loving and Leaving Ballet (2023)).
One thing I enjoyed this year was mixing up my reading by turning to books I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen by myself but ended up loving. A book club led to me reading Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart (2021), while Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife (1929) was a gift that became one of my favorite reads of the year.
Going into 2024, I hope to continue to bring this same spirit of experimentation to my reading. I’m looking forward to seeing which 50 books I turn to next…
What were your top reads of 2023? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want to keep up with my reading and writing? Sign up for my email newsletter here.
Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. For the second time in this series, following my review of Amy Brill’s The Movement of Stars(2013) in 2019, we’re back in nineteenth-century Nantucket. This time I’m reviewing Julie Gerstenblatt’s 2023 Daughters of Nantucket, which follows several women’s lives on the island in the lead up to and aftermath of the Great Fire of 1846.
Eliza is a whaling captain’s wife, who’s struggling financially and emotionally following her husband’s long absence at sea. Maria is an astronomer and curator, who’s hiding her sexuality. And Meg is a pregnant Black businesswoman, who’s still fighting for equality, although she was born free.
Gerstenblatt uses the three women’s different perspectives and experiences to bring the island as it was during this period to life. Only one of them (Maria) shares a name with a true historical figure, although all three were born out of research. The stakes of the interwoven narratives were high and the women’s personalities were distinct enough to maintain reader interest throughout.
What I most enjoyed about the book were the details that were clearly part of Gerstenblatt’s research. I’ve visited the Whaling Museum on the island and so it was great to see the true story of Nantucket’s commercial and social history told there reinvented in fiction. I also enjoyed the structure of the novel, with the countdown to the fire ramping up tension and keeping us guessing about what would happen to our characters.
What I found less successful was the engagement with social justice themes, especially related to race and sexuality. There is so much rich history in Nantucket about the island’s Black population, but the characters in Daughters of Nantucket at times seemed to speak with twenty-first-century voices, rather than embodying the attitudes of progressive islanders in the 1840s.
All in, though, Gerstenblatt’s love for Nantucket and its history shines through in this entertaining read. If you want to lie to yourself that it’s still summer, consider picking up a copy and taking an imaginative trip to the beaches of New England.
What novel would you like me to read next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want to stay up to date with all my reviews? Make sure you sign up to my monthly email newsletter here.
Gina Marie Guadagnino’s 2019 The Parting Glass has many of the elements I love to see in books I review for my Neo-Victorian Voices series, on novels written in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. Not only does the story take place in the 1830s, but the location is New York City, our heroine is Irish, and the subject matter is forbidden love (including several lesbian romances).
Mary Ballard is lady’s maid to society beauty Charlotte Wharton, whom she’s secretly and passionately in love with. But she’s already lost one life for having a sexual relationship with a woman and, what’s more, Charlotte is having sex with Mary’s twin brother Johnny, even though she’s meant to remain a virgin until marriage.
Guadagnino does a great job painting a picture of the upstairs/downstairs world of the Wharton household, and also the very different world Mary and Johnny inhabit on their nights off, drinking at an Irish bar with publican Dermot, who knows their past and their real names. Another bright spot is the character of Liddie, a half-Black sex worker Mary meets and develops a relationship with over the course of the novel.
There’s plenty of action, the stakes are high, and the novel reaches a dramatic climax, which delivers on the marketing promise that, in The Parting Glass, “Downton Abbey meets Gangs of New York.”
What was less clear to me was whether Mary is a character we’re supposed to relate to and sympathize with. Her sexual obsession with Charlotte, while realistic, has incestuous overtones, which some readers may find off-putting. I actually wish Guadagnino had leaned into this even more at the start of the novel, but given Mary a character arc, as she came to a new, mature understanding of romantic love thanks to her reciprocal relationship with Liddie. Instead (slight spoiler here!), I left the novel feeling that Mary had treated Liddie pretty poorly and disappointed that she was still putting Charlotte and her style of upper-class, White beauty on a pedestal.
Have you read The Parting Glass? I’d love to hear what you thought of the novel. Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
Welcome (or welcome back!) to my blog and to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, in which I review novels set in the nineteenth century but written in the twenty-first. This time, I’ll be discussing Julie Cohen’s Spirited (2020), which (spoiler alert) I loved!
Julie Cohen and I were previously on a panel together, celebrating the Brontes during the 2020 pandemic lockdowns (catch a video recording of the event here). And I recently had the pleasure of listening to her keynote at the Historical Novel Society 2022 conference. However, this was my first time reading one of her novels.
Set in the 1850s, Spirited tells the story of Viola (an amateur photographer grieving the loss of her beloved father), her new husband, Jonah, who’s keeping secrets about his time in India, and Henriette, a “medium” who’s adept at conning the bereaved. Even this short description gives you a good sense of some of the components that attracted me to the book. I love Victorian settings, a Gothic mood, and the very nineteenth-century fascination with pastimes which test the boundaries between the scientific and the supernatural.
But I was surprised to find that Spirited also treats the reader to several queer love stories, to some first-class character and relationship development, even as the plot moves forward at a good pace, and to chapters set in a lesser-seen locale in historical fiction, Delhi.
Cohen does a great job weaving the story threads of her different point of view characters and in withholding information from us without straining credulity (something I complained about in my recent blog on Elizabeth Macneal’s Circus of Wonders (2021)). The opening scene, Viola and Jonah’s wedding, was wonderfully atmospheric, but don’t let the first pages fool you: while the subject matter might sound dark, Cohen gives us moments of levity too, and, against seemingly all odds, delivers a happy ending.
I’d recommend the novel to readers of Gothic, to people interested in nineteenth-century spiritualism, and to anyone who enjoyed Kris Waldherr’s The Lost History of Dreams (2019).
One of the coolest experiences I’ve had since the release of my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, was when I was asked to write an introduction to Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) for a beautiful edition from Canadian publisher Plumleaf Press. The book is part of a trio of lesser-read classics by nineteenth-century women writers in the Plumleaf Vintage series, all with introductions penned by women historical novelists publishing today.
Along with Anne Bronte’s masterpiece, there’s also Lady Susan by Jane Austen (1794), with a foreword by Natalie Jenner, author of The Jane Austen Society (2020). And—I was surprised and delighted to find—completing the set is an Elizabeth Gaskell short story/novella I hadn’t read previously, The Grey Woman (1861).
Molly Greeley, whose The Clergyman’s Wife (2019) I’ve reviewed on this blog, is the introduction writer for this slight but impactful Gothic tale. Expect to find many of the tropes of the genre—a frame narrative insisting on the veracity of the story; a strange house, filled with secrets; and a vulnerable young bride, whose husband is not all he seems.
But this isn’t just a ripping yarn, or a familiar Victorian fable about the dangers of rushing into a marriage that appears too good to be true. Of most interest to me in the text was the friendship between our protagonist, Anne, and her lady’s companion, Amante. There are clear lesbian overtones to their relationship—from Amante’s name to her cross-dressing to (spoiler alert) a section where the two are cohabiting and even coparenting. The biggest disappointment of the piece is the “off-stage” conclusion of Amante’s story, though many readers will conclude what Gaskell only suggests—that Anne turns grey less from fear of her murderous husband than from grief at the loss of her female lover.
If you’re studying Gaskell and gender or looking for nineteenth-century fiction with a LGBTQ+ subtext, The Grey Woman is well-worth adding to your reading list. And for general readers? If you’re laboring under any misconception that Victorians all blushed at the sight of table legs, this novella is an entertaining antidote.
Which lesser-known nineteenth-century novel would you like me to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
Most of the twenty-first century written, nineteenth century set novels I’ve read, which are centered on the Black experience in the United States, have focused on the horrors of slavery (see for example, my reviews of Sadeqa Johnson’s Yellow Wife, Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings, Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s Wench, and Valerie Martin’s Property). Freedom was presented as a goal, a dream, and a destination for the characters in many of these books, with little page space given over to what freedom looked like, or even could look like, for African Americans during and after the Civil War.
As the title of Kaitlyn Greenidge’s 2021 novel, Libertie, suggests, this is a book all about freedom. Our title character is a freeborn, Black girl in nineteenth-century Brooklyn. As a child, she witnesses her mother’s role in the Underground Railroad, smuggling enslaved people to the North in coffins. And as she grows and matures, Libertie grapples more and more with what freedom means to her. Is true liberty possible in a country so divided along race lines? Could real freedom mean starting over in the Black-led nation of Haiti? And can she shake free of the life her mother, a white-passing, Black, woman doctor, planned for her?
This all sounds very lofty, and the novel does deal with complex history and difficult themes, but at the core of Libertie is this quieter story about the fraught, but loving, relationship between mother and daughter. At times I was frustrated with Libertie’s perspective, especially in her teenage years, but Greenidge’s depictions of the misunderstandings between the protagonist and her mother have a sharply observed psychological realism. Libertie has other important relationships too—with the grieving escapee she sees her mother “raise from the dead” at the book’s opening, with a pair of singing, Black, women college students, who she eventually realizes are romantically linked to each other, and with the Haitian man whom she marries—but it is the mother/daughter bond that makes this a compelling character-driven read.
Those who enjoy the intersection of historical fact and fiction may also want to learn more about the inspiration for the character of Libertie’s mother in the novel—Dr. Susan Smith McKinney-Steward, who was the third Black woman to earn a medical degree in the United States.
Andrew Haswell Green (1821-1903) is the greatest New Yorker you might never have heard of. Often referred to as the “Father of Greater New York,” this self-made city planner and lawyer was instrumental in the creation of landmarks such as Central Park, the New York Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Bronx Zoo, and the American Museum of Natural History.
In his 2021 novel, The Great Mistake, Jonathan Lee brings us into Green’s inner world, painting a picture of a brilliant but isolated man, whose untimely murder (no spoilers here—this opens the book!) was as senseless as the time period’s suppression of his same sex desire.
Jumping around in time, we become acquainted with Green as a dignified celebrity in the bustling metropolis and as a farm boy desperate for his own father’s love. He is the shopkeeper’s apprentice, working long hours to survive, the businessman shocked by, but implicated in, the ill treatment of workers in Trinidad, and the young man enamored of his friend Samuel J. Tilden, who was born with much greater privileges.
The novel is literary and character-driven, but two questions pull us through the pages. One: who killed Green? And two: what was the great mistake of the title? The first of these is answered clearly; the second remains a subject of debate. Was Green’s mistake uniting Manhattan and Brooklyn? Does the phrase instead refer to his murder? Or did he misstep in his personal life, perhaps by prioritizing his professional aspirations?
Lee writes good prose and there are some chapters and moments here where good becomes great. Other more philosophical passages, such as the political debate set against the backdrop of Brooklyn Bridge, are less successful.
Still, I’d recommend The Great Mistake to lovers of quieter historical fiction, to those with an interest in queer identities in the nineteenth century, and to anyone with a fondness for New York City.
I’m cheating a little with this one. My Neo-Victorian Voices series typically covers books written in the twenty-first century, and set in the nineteenth. Charles Lewisnky’s Melnitz, first published in German in 2006, starts in the 1870s, but covers the fortunes of the Swiss Jewish Meijer family until the Second World War. Still, I couldn’t not tell you about this wonderful novel!
I love a good multigenerational family saga (Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s The Mountains Sing (2020) and Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko (2017) were recent favourites). But it can be hard to connect with so many characters across multiple generations. Lewinsky does a great job of characterising his cast with a few deft brushstrokes, painting them as individuals forced to make painfully human choices amidst shifting political tides and the ever-lurking threat of anti-Semitism.
To read this novel is to live with the burden of history. We know what will happen next as the Meijers cannot. Where to live? Under which nationality? And with whom? These are life or death decisions. The drama of Melnitz isn’t comprised of twists we don’t see coming. As readers, we’re watching a train thundering towards the family, and unable to tell them to get off the tracks.
I loved the broad definition of family the novel embraces. Not all of the characters are linked by blood or marriage, or even religion—the Christian baptism of one character is a momentous event in the course of the novel. But a shared cultural inheritance, stories, and memories, as well as the experience of being othered within Switzerland and beyond, bind those we follow together.
Some of the standout moments for me included the depiction of Arthur’s sexuality, the evolution of the relationship between stepsisters Chanele and Mimi, and the sort-of friendship between Hillel and his Frontist classmate at the agricultural college.
Coming to this novel, I knew little about the lives of Jewish people in Switzerland in the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, depictions of the country in the WWII period often focus on Switzerland as a dream destination, the symbol of freedom and safety, appearing through the Alps. I’m so happy I read this book and will be recommending it to anyone who’ll listen. If you enjoy novels filled with humour and pathos, which bring to life histories you haven’t heard before, you’ll love this book.
What novel would you like me to review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. My novel, Bronte’s Mistress, is available in hardcover, audiobook, and e-book now, and the paperback will be released on June 22nd! Want to stay in touch? Sign up for my monthly email newsletter below.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading The Marquise de Sade, by Rachilde (first published in French in 1887).
I’ve read books by other writers who were part of the late nineteenth-century Decadent Movement. I’ve blogged, for instance, about Joris-Karl Huysmans’s 1884 À Rebours (Against Nature), which is often held up as representative of the excesses of the artistic and literary movement. I’ve read Oscar Wilde, Max Beerbohm, and Algernon Charles Swinburne, some of the most famous Decadent writers in English. And I’ve enjoyed the illustrations of Aubrey Beardsley, probably the most famous British visual artist in this group.
However, I had no idea until recently that there was a woman writer amongst the leading French Decadent authors—Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, who published under the pen name Rachilde.
The Marquise de Sade, Rachilde (1887)
The novel of Rachilde’s I picked up was The Marquise de Sade (1887), though her 1884 Monsieur Venus is perhaps slightly better known. Flicking through its front pages, I discovered that it had taken more than a hundred years (!!) for The Marquise de Sade to be published in English, with this translation, by Liz Heron, appearing in 1994.
An intriguing writer, a racy title, and a recent translation? I was in, and flew through the novel within days. Now I’m blogging to tell you all about it. Warning: spoilers ahead, as this one’s a little off the beaten track…
CN: Sexual Violence, Animal Cruelty, Transphobia, Homophobia
First up, the title is pretty misleading. The novel has nothing directly to do with the nobleman, philosopher, and sexual libertine who put the “S” in “BDSM.” Rather, the feminisation of the title (this is the Marquise de Sade, rather than the masculine Marquis) is a reference to the novel’s central theme. Rachilde’s book is a bildungsroman about how a girl grows into a woman with a perverse taste for cruelty.
Second, if you’re expecting sex on every page, you’re going to be disappointed. Mary Barbe, our protagonist, is seven years old in the opening chapter and the book mainly deals with her childhood. This, of course, includes references to her nascent sexuality, but it’s only in the last quarter of the novel, when Mary is an adult, that the content becomes overtly and consistently sexual.
What I was least prepared for was how (deliberately!) funny the book was in parts. Mary is the daughter of a colonel and Rachilde’s satirical depiction of the social life of officers in the French army is incredibly entertaining.
As a writer, I was also impressed by Rachilde’s convincing use of a child’s point of view, while the narrative still winks at what’s really going on between the grown-up characters. Even as the book plays with the excessive and the absurd (e.g. a brawl between the officers’ children over live lambs, which have been given out as gifts at a kids’ party), I felt like the writer really knew and could empathise with children—something that’s pretty rare in nineteenth-century novels.
I’m no psychiatrist, but Rachilde’s psychological portrait of Mary reads as proto-Freudian and progressive. Mary is initially a sensitive and caring child. But neglected by her family, who would prefer her to be a boy, she is starved of affection and has several early experiences that lead to her associating love and pain. Her first (pretty innocent) fumblings with a boy in her tweenage years are also linked to power play, as she convinces him to steal a prized rose from his employer for her in return for a kiss.
As the novel progresses, her development becomes less believable. She ends the novel fantasising about murder, having tasted every other excess. And, in a strange twist I didn’t see coming, it is a “transvestite man” that she considers killing. She talks of men who sleep with other men as “fallen” and “ill-equipped to defend [themselves] against women.” And says, “her conscience would be clear if the chosen victim were among that kind!”
While the ending is a clear escalation in violence, there are also plenty of other moments readers will find problematic, distasteful and shocking throughout the book.
There are various instances of animal cruelty. The opening scene sees Mary faint as she watches an ox being butchered and its blood drained as a cure for her consumptive mother. As a small child, Mary’s beloved companion is a cat (even though it scratches her). I won’t go into details, but, predictably, the cat and her kittens meet unpleasant ends, further cementing Mary’s misandry and misogyny.
Mary’s own “cruelty” as an adult at first revolves around exercising her newfound power to deny men. She pretends she loves them, but refuses to have sex with them, or goads them into making sexual advances, but then blackmails them about what they have done. Eventually, one of the young men she’s been playing with rapes her, cuckolding his father in the process. The narrative suggests that he is the victim.
But it’s not only men who Mary can captivate and torture. In one of the most memorable scenes in the novel, Mary has a woman who wishes to sleep with her strip naked before her, and then, without warning, brands her with a red-hot poker. Reader, I gasped.
I’ve written before about the misconceptions people can have about the nineteenth century. This was certainly not a period when everyone was swooning at the sight of an ankle or an uncovered table leg. French Decadent literature may be more out there than the novels of British novelists in the time period, but you can be sure that many of our literary greats were reading books like this one. Overall, I’d recommend The Marquise de Sade to enthusiasts for the period with a strong constitution, and to adventurous readers with a taste for more than Fifty Shades of Grey…
Compared to The Marquise de Sade, my own novel, Bronte’s Mistress, seems almost wholesome, but, if you love the nineteenth century, please consider buying a copy for yourself or as Holiday gift this Christmas season! Want to get in touch? You can always message me on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter (no creepy DMs please), and you can also sign up for my monthly email below.
You may know me as the author of Bronte’s Mistress, but, when I’m not writing my own books, I’m reading other people’s. For five and a half years now, in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, I’ve been reviewing books set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first.
It’s 1826 and Frannie Langton is in the Old Bailey prison in London when Collins’s novel opens. She’s accused of murdering her employer Mr Benham and his wife, a crime she tells us she can’t have committed because she was in love with her mistress. Frannie was born into slavery in Jamaica, and the British press has dubbed her “the Mulatto Murderess.” She doubts the court will recognise her humanity in her upcoming trial, so she chooses to make her confession to us, the readers, instead.
But what exactly is Frannie confessing? Did she kill either or both of the Benhams? Was she a complicit in the dissections and vivisections of slaves back on the plantation? Should we see her as a victim of sexual abuse, a willing party to incest, or both? Or is her confession a cri de coeur about her romantic feelings for a woman, a union this society condemns as equally unnatural?
While the plot unfolds slowly (after all, we know from the beginning that murder will be our destination), Frannie’s voice is distinctive and interesting. This feels in keeping with the unusual circumstances of her life, and, while I’ve read a few reviews from readers who found the frequency of similes excessive, I enjoyed how Frannie’s images were always rooted in her frame of reference.
Emotionally, there are few moments of joy. This is a novel about righteous and unrelenting anger, and the reading experience can be exhausting. There’s no respite for Frannie, but she never acts the part of docile and pitiable victim. A line of advice the character is given early in the book really stood out to me: “[There are] only two types of white people in this world, chile, the ones doing shit to you and the ones wanting you to tell them ’bout the shit them other ones did.” Collins asks (especially White) readers to confront their own ideas of what a narrative about a former slave should be.
While Frannie is an utterly original creation, at times she reminded me of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. Like Jane, she’s overlooked and unfairly written off by those around her, and frequently thrust into the role of observer, although her perceptions are sharp and her words can be fierce. At the same time, she is also, of course, akin to Jane’s predecessor Bertha Mason, another famous Jamaican. As in postcolonial interpretations of Bertha, Frannie can be seen as an avenging angel, a personification of the White British man’s fears of his abuses abroad, the source of his wealth, coming back to haunt him.
I thoroughly enjoyed The Confessions of Frannie Langton and urge fellow Victorianists to add it to their reading lists. Do you have a tip for me about a great book for my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
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Welcome back to my Writers’ Questions series, where, drawing on my own experiences of my debut novel, Bronte’s Mistress, coming out this year, I’ve been covering topics of interests to aspiring novelists.
We’ve already talked craft (e.g. words to cut and passive voice), trying to get published (e.g. finding literary agents), and more. This time, we’re covering social media, with a list of handy hashtags you should consider exploring if you’re new to the online writing community.
A #shelfie from my apartment
One word on platform. Hashtags are most central to the social experience on Instagram and Twitter. Some of the hashtags I mention are more prevalent on one than the other. A broad strokes distinction? I see many writers using Twitter to connect with each other, but Instagram to connect with readers.
#WritingCommunity
Short of writer friends? #WritingCommunity could be a great resource for you. Grow your followers, ask questions and learn from each other’s experiences. Generally, #WritingCommunity is a supportive community and, importantly, a reciprocal one. So don’t join the conversation just planning to take. You should be prepared to give (whether likes, follows, retweets, advice, or morale boosts) too.
#TenQueries, #10Queries, #100Queries
All of these are hashtags some literary agents use to ‘live tweet’ the contents of their query inboxes. They don’t give away identifying details for each author/book, but share what makes them request or reject a manuscript. Reading along can be very helpful if you’re in the process of writing your query, but don’t get too obsessed, worrying if agents are talking about you once you’ve pressed send!
#OwnVoices
Are you a writer from an underrepresented group? Or do you want to support and learn from authors who are? Then check out #OwnVoices. Here you’ll find writers of books featuring protagonists who share the race/gender identity/sexuality/disabilities of their creators.
#MSWL
I’ve mentioned #MSWL (which stands for Manuscript Wish List) before. Essentially this is a hashtag agents and acquiring editors at publishing houses use to tell the world what sort of books they are looking to represent or publish. Search #MSWL + key terms related to your novel to track down interested individuals and/or keep up with the hashtag more broadly to identify content themes the industry is loving now.
#Bookstagram
Want to up your own Instagram game? Learn from the pros, by looking at the beautiful posts shared by the platform’s bookish influencers, known as Bookstagrammers. They’ll teach you how to perfect the #Shelfie (a photo of your bookshelf), or the #TBR shot, which shows off your ‘to be read’ books.
Your genre’s hashtags
Every genre has its own hashtags (often acronyms and abbreviations). If you write historical fiction like me, check out #HistoricalFiction and #HistFic. The genre is also shortened to just #HF on occasion (e.g. in some #MSWL posts).
If you’re a writer, I’d love to know what hashtags you love to engage with to connect with others online. Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
Plus, big news,if you’re signed up to my email newsletter already, or if you sign up this month (May 2020) using the link below, you’ll be in with a shot of winning one of two advance reader copies of Bronte’s Mistress, prior to its publication!My novel gives voice to Lydia Robinson, the older, married woman, who had an affair with Branwell Bronte, and offers a new perspective on English literature’s most famous family. Sign up below!
The crowded, murky streets of Victorian London. A detective. And a missing child. Pretty standard fare, you might think, for a historical mystery set in the nineteenth century, but Jess Kidd’s Things in Jars (2020), the latest novel under review in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, is anything but expected.
Things in Jars, Jess Kidd (2020)
First there’s her detective, Bridie—fearless, flame haired and ugly bonneted. Then there are the protagonist’s sidekicks—a seven-foot maid, with a penchant for a woman snake charmer, and a tattooed boxer, who may be either a ghost or a drug-induced hallucination. Christabel, the child Bridie has been employed to find, isn’t ordinary either. She has teeth like a pike. Snails, newts and other nasties trail after her. It’s said she can drown enemies even on dry land.
Things in Jars isn’t for the weak-hearted or stomached. But that doesn’t mean the novel offers only darkness. There’s a humour to the story, which is a wonderful complement to its macabre subjects, and an empathy to the shifting point of view, which plunges us into many characters’ motivations, feelings and desires, even those of a raven wheeling high above the scene. Kidd’s use of language is also astonishing. Her vocabulary is vast but her words always well chosen. Her Irish characters’ voices are expertly rendered—believable and lyrical without relying on cliché or non-standard spelling to convey dialect.
The fantastical elements of the story stood out for me in particular. I’m not a huge reader of historical fantasy, though I have reviewed a few favourites for this blog in the past (e.g. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent, and Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus). But Kidd’s creatures are unique and genuinely uncanny, as unnerving as any creation straight from the pages of a nineteenth-century Gothic.
Things in Jars is a wonderful book to read if you want to stray outside your normal genre choices. The novel takes a familiar historical setting and makes it alien, gives us a satisfying conclusion to its central mystery while leaving us with more, and gives readers a creature of the ocean depths that belongs in neither The Little Mermaid, nor The Shape of Water.
Which novel would you like to see me review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, on novels written in the twenty first century, but set in the nineteenth? Let me know, here, on Facebook, on Instagram or by tweeting @SVictorianist. And if you want to read about my novel, Bronte’s Mistress, which was edited by the same editor as Things in Jars, click here and/or sign up for my monthly newsletter below.
The best lines of poetry are like
catchy tunes. They hang in the air and haunt you. I’ve been haunted by the
poetry of Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) for more than a decade.
Although born in 1869, Mew isn’t
really thought of as one of the ‘Victorians’. Her work found an audience in the
1900s-1920s, but her irregular metre led the editor Eddie Marsh to exclude her
from Georgian Poetry IV (the first
time he considered including a woman poet in these period-defining anthologies).
And her poetry is too narrative for her to be counted amongst the Imagist
poets. In fact, Mew herself resisted classification and collection. For
instance, she refused to be featured in Macmillan’s Golden Treasury of Modern Lyrics.
Charlotte Mew (1869-1928)
Yet, ironically, she did find her way into one curated
volume, an omnibus of English poems through the ages, which I studied as part
of my Literature A-Level. It was here I
first read the ‘The Farmer’s Bride’, her most famous poem, which also lends its
title to her only book (first published 1916, with an expanded edition
featuring new material appearing in 1921).
Shy as a leveret, swift as he,
Straight and slight as a young larch tree,
Sweet as the first wild violets, she,
To her wild self. But what to me?
This is how the
farmer describes his bride, a virgin whose fear of her marriage bed drives her
to flee from her home.
Lines from a second poem,
‘The Quiet House’, recurred to me too:
He frightened me before he smiled—
He did not ask me if he might—
He said that he would come one Sunday
night
And:
Red is the strangest pain to bear
Recently, I started to
expand my knowledge of Mew beyond these two poems, thanks to Penelope
Fitzgerald’s (1916-2000) wonderful 1988 biography, Charlotte Mew and Her Friends. The book confirmed my belief that
Charlotte Mew is a ‘writer’s writer’. Fitzgerald’s prose is so good that the
only times I paused when reading were to consider more deeply one
of her sentences or a quoted line of Mew’s poetry.
I learned that Mew’s
life was every bit as sad as her poems had led me to believe. Two of her
siblings succumbed to madness young, rendering incarceration necessary. And, after
her architect father’s death, she and her artist younger sister, bore the
weight of the household finances, while still ‘keeping up appearances’ for
their ageing mother. Eventually, Mew committed suicide not long after the death
of her younger sister, Anne. It was a tragic end for a talented woman, who,
despite her brusque manner, had many friends who cared for her.
Mew struggled with a
series of romantic infatuations for women, none of whom requited, or even
understood, her affections. Fitzgerald’s biography deals with this well, not
transposing late twentieth-century ideas about lesbianism onto an early twentieth-century
context.
What stuck me most
was Mew’s loneliness, and not just because of her sexuality. Everyone, from admirers
to detractors, agreed that nobody
wrote like Charlotte Mew. Yet, ironically, her originality of thought, and the beauty
of her expression, now forges connections with new readers across the
centuries.
Which lesser-known
nineteenth-century writer would you like the Secret Victorianist to write about
next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.
