Neo-Victorian Voices: The Wildes: A Novel in Five Acts, Louis Bayard (2024)

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.

Which novel should I read next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates on my blog and writing? Sign up for my email newsletter here. 

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Good Lord Bird, James McBride (2013)

The latest title I’m reviewing as part of Neo-Victorian Voices series, covering novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first, is James McBride’s 2013, National Book Award winner, The Good Lord Bird.

Our memorable protagonist is Henry Shackleford, who’s been born into slavery in the Kansas Territory. In 1857, aged around 12, he is “freed” (read: “kidnapped”) by abolitionist James Brown, who mistakes him for a girl and gives him the nickname, Onion. In the years that follow, Henry/Onion has a front row seat to a violent, dangerous, and pivotal period of American history, which he narrates vividly, and, bizarrely enough, with delicious humor. 

Of the many historical novels I’ve read centering on the institution of American slavery, The Good Lord Bird is the most entertaining. McBride brilliantly dramatizes how Onion is misunderstood, overlooked, and underestimated by the (mainly white) characters around him, in a way that provokes laughter while dealing with the difficult issue of racial prejudice.

I also enjoyed his exploration of the character of James Brown. While I’m not an expert on Brown’s life and crusade, it’s clear that McBride has tried to unpack the complex mix of emotions he might provoke in modern readers by pairing research with imagination in his depiction of this fascinating personality.

I was a little surprised that Onion, who’s dressed as a girl for much of the novel, didn’t experience more harassment and other downsides to living as a woman, but, in some ways, this was a welcome break for me as a reader—many novels depicting black women’s experiences in the era have a heavy emphasis on sexual violence.

Part satire, part military historical, part coming of age narrative, with shades of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), I highly recommend The Good Lord Bird to other readers interested in nineteenth-century America.

What novel should I review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist! Want monthly updates from this blog? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Champagne Letters, Kate MacIntosh (2024)

Welcome back to my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books set in the nineteenth century but written in the twenty-first!

Today’s novel is a dual timeline historical that alternates between the perspectives of a present-day American divorcee, who finds herself in Paris after unexpectedly becoming single in her fifties, and the widow behind the Veuve Clicquot champagne house, who writes letters to her great-granddaughter about how she navigated the Napoleonic era as a businesswoman, in a time when the wine industry was almost entirely controlled by men.

MacIntosh’s research into the fascinating life of Barbe Nicole Ponsardin Clicquot is clear. She does a great job fictionalizing Clicquot’s biography and turning it into a digestible story that maintains human interest, even as it covers complex swathes of French history. 

The modern-day storyline, following Natalie, is lighter and even easier to read. Natalie is the quintessential American in Paris, charmed by French fashion, food, and wine, and stumbling through the capital asking everyone she encounters if they speak English. She’s swept up in a romance with a dashing man named Gabriel and connecting with the famous champagne widow, via a book of her letters, within what seems like seconds of stepping off her plane from Chicago, but some fun plot twists keep the story fresh and entertaining. 

Overall, the book left me with the impression that MacIntosh wrote it for readers like Natalie–those in love with the idea of Paris and excited by the effervescence of champagne, even if their grasp of French history and wine is a little loose. We often talk about beach reads, but this is a city break read: I’d recommend it if you’re dreaming of a trip to Paris…or if you’re looking for a summer book club pick that gives you the excuse to break open the bubbles.

What book should I review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want my blog posts delivered straight to your inbox monthly? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Victorian Psycho, Virginia Feito (2025)

Realism is as synonymous with nineteenth century-set novels as petticoats and corsets, but Virginia Feito’s 2025 Victorian Psycho isn’t a “realistic” tale of a serial killer governess. 

Instead, the novel, the latest I’m reviewing as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, is a sort of historical fever dream of the most gruesome kind, that relies on its period setting, unlikely murderer/protagonist, and vulnerable victims (many of them infants) for its shock value. The result is a highly readable novel that will make you laugh and ask, “did she really go there?” unless, of course, you’re squeamish—in which case, I’d give this one a miss. 

Winifred Notty arrives at Ensor House to act as governess to Drusilla and Andrew Pounds. But don’t be fooled—she’s no Jane Eyre! We quickly learn unsavory details of Winifred’s previous posts and become aware of her violent and unusual appetites, but the real reason she’s now targeting the Pounds family is a later revelation. 

The more “usual” problems of a Victorian governess—e.g., unpleasant charges and a lecherous employer—soon give way to dilemmas like where Winifred should hide the mounting bodies and whether anyone will notice bloodstained baby clothes. The tension at Ensor House ratchets up, leading to a bloodbath of a denouement, timed to coincide with Christmas, of course, and a conclusion reminiscent of my dissertation about nineteenth-century sensation fiction, in which I argued that female characters who “act the part” of the middle-class Victorian heroine can literally get away with murder.

A film adaptation is already in the works and Victorian Psycho definitely reads like it was written with a view to the big screen. As someone who loves both horror movies and the nineteenth century, I’ll definitely be watching, and I’d recommend the book to anyone who sits at the center of this Venn diagram, like me!

What novels should I consider reviewing next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates from my blog? Sign up for my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Swan’s Nest, Laura McNeal (2024)

It’s no secret that I love a book based on real Victorian scandals (after all, I did write a novel about the affair between Branwell Bronte and Lydia Robinson!), so I was excited to read Laura McNeal’s 2024 The Swan’s Nest as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, reviewing works set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first.

The Swan’s Nest tells the story of the relationship between Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett, in the lead up to, and early days of, their marriage, set against a backdrop of an English social milieu grappling with the legacy of slavery and exploitation in Jamaica. 

The courtship depicted here is tender, rather than steamy, and much of the novel focuses on side characters (some fictional, some based on real figures). Lovers of historical romance may be disappointed, but McNeal’s prose is enjoyable, and the novel feels well-researched and realistic. 

Barrett’s anxiety over her controlling father’s reaction to her burgeoning relationship and the love of poetry she shares with Browning came across most strongly. The sections dealing with colonialism leaned a little too didactic for my taste and took us away from the central characters but the important topic being explored will engage readers who are learning about the Barretts’ unsavory “business” interests for the first time.

Overall, while The Swan’s Nest is one of the quieter novels I’ve reviewed as part of this series, I would recommend it to anyone with a love for Browning and/or Barrett’s poems, an interest in the history of the British West Indies, or a preference for biographical historical fiction.

Do you have recommendations for what book I should review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist!

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Neo-Victorian Voices: Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter, Lizzie Pook (2022)

Welcome back to the Neo-Victorian Voices review series, covering novels set in the nineteenth century, but written in the twenty-first. Today I’m blogging for the first time about a book set in 1800s Australia! The closest I’ve gotten previously was 1800s New Zealand, when reviewing Eleanor Catton’s 2013 The Luminaries back in 2018. 

It’s 1896 in Western Australia when Eliza’s father, the owner of a prominent pearling business, goes missing at sea. She and her family arrived from England ten years previously and have suffered more than their fair share of tragedy since. Now, the tomboyish Eliza is on a mission to find and save her father, as she couldn’t the family members she lost before. 

Pook deftly introduces us to the world of a remote (fictional) Australian town, peopled by diverse immigrants, corrupt authorities, and a mistreated aboriginal population. It’s a vibrant setting of inhospitable landscapes, teeming with fascinating, and dangerous, animal life, such as salties, sharks, and kleptomaniac cockatoos. 

If you read historical fiction to be transported to a different time and place and to learn about past events you might not have been aware of, there’s a lot to enjoy about Moonlight and the Pearler’s Daughter. I relished the insight into the pearl trade and the additional levels of agency possible for a nineteenth-century heroine in an Australian vs. a British, or even an American, setting. Eliza is also an appealing main character, likable without being flawless.

I wish the supporting characters had been a little more developed, especially Axel, Eliza’s will they/won’t they potential love interest, Min, her friend, and the antagonist Parker, who is irredeemably evil. No spoilers here but the revelation of the reason behind the father’s disappearance was also a little underwhelming.

All in, this is an original contribution to the genre and a novel I’d recommend to readers looking to broaden their horizons and follow a nineteenth-century heroine far beyond the drawing room.

What novels should I consider reviewing next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates about my blogging/writing? Sign up for my email newsletter here.

Review: The Animal, Rachilde (1893)

I very much enjoyed reviewing French Decadent writer Rachilde’s 1887’s The Marquise de Sade for this blog back in 2020, which was one reason why I was so delighted when publisher Rachilde & Co. got in touch about their new translation/edition of her 1893 novel, The Animal. 

The Animal, Rachilde (1893)

Available in English for the very first time, The Animal tells the story of Laure Lordès, a woman with a love of sex, food, and cats. Move aside Mary Barbe (heroine of The Marquise de Sade)—Laure is potentially an even more shocking nineteenth-century heroine. Precociously sexual, she introduces all the neighborhood boys to sin before even reaching puberty. Casually cruel, she drives her father’s one-eyed clerk to suicide, following their affair. And distinctly feline herself, both in appearance and attitude, she reaches a violent end at the hands paws of the one living creature she really loves.

Intrigued yet? You should be. This is a novel that will make you revisit your assumptions about the nineteenth century and potentially understand the perspective of those British Victorians who were so alarmed by the literature of the French on the other side of the Channel. 

But the importance of The Animal isn’t just in its shock value. Some of the book’s most memorable moments, for me, were about not Laure, but the more conventional characters surrounding her. Laure’s in-born love of sex is contrasted with the transactional nature of intimacy in the social sanctioned arenas of both sex work and marriage. In one passage, Rachilde passes this damning verdict on Laure’s lover, whose approach to both eating and lovemaking is functional and prosaic:

“He would marry because romantic relationships are not very safe despite numerous pharmaceutical discoveries, and he would have children modeled after him, other samples of the irreproachable modern bourgeois factory: molds from other molds, loaded in the belly with the same meter that regulates both the needs of the stomach and those of love…! No, these men do not have the gift of loving, even like animals do; they are, in the scale of beings, below animals, between the mineral diamond and the mineral oyster shell!”

Overall, I’d like to thank Rachilde & Co. for such a fascinating read and to recommend this novel to every English-speaking adult—mostly because I want more people to talk about it with! Read The Animal already? Let me know—here, on Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want regular updates from me? Sign up to my monthly email newsletter.

Review: Three Tales, Gustave Flaubert (1877)

I’ve previously reviewed Gustave Flaubert’s 1869 novel, A Sentimental Education, for this blog, but this month I’m back with a post about a lesser-known work—his collection of Three Tales, published eight years later in 1877. 

In the first story, ‘A Simple Heart,’ a servant woman, Felicité, suffers through a difficult existence, despite the love she has to give. She ends her days unable to distinguish between her stuffed and moldy parrot, the one creature that ever showed her any affection, and the Holy Ghost.

Meanwhile in the second story, ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier,’ a much-loved son with a sadistic passion for hunting finds himself subject to a terrible curse. Destined to kill his own parents, Julian abandons his former life to save theirs, but fate soon catches up with him with terrible consequences.

Finally, in his third story, ‘Hérodias,’ Flaubert expands on the biblical tale of the beheading of John the Baptist.

All three tales, which I read in Roger Whitehouse’s translation, have a modern feel, especially when contrasted with Flaubert’s full-length novels. ‘A Simple Heart’ and ‘The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitalier’ are both incredibly readable, while ‘Hérodias’ is denser, packed as it is with proper nouns and theological references. 

I found ‘A Simple Heart’ emotionally arresting, even as the old woman’s veneration of a taxidermied parrot borders on the absurd, and the descriptions of Julian’s blood lust as he hunts will stay with me. ‘Hérodias’ left me a little cold, but that could be due to familiarity with later works, such as Oscar Wilde’s Salome (1893), which Flaubert’s story is said to have inspired.

Overall, Flaubert’s Three Tales succeed in feeling fabulistic, while remaining unexpected. They’re peopled by characters with depth—these men and women aren’t just archetypes—that show off Flaubert’s range and far-reaching empathy. If you’re looking for a shorter work of nineteenth-century literature to read next, check the collection out, or dive into my full “Victorians in Brief” list here.

What book would you like me to review next on the Secret Victorianist? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Witches of New York, Ami McKay (2016)

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.

Review: Stranger in the Shogun’s City, A Japanese Woman and Her World, Amy Stanley (2020)

I know very little about nineteenth-century Japan, but I strongly identified with non-fiction writer Amy Stanley’s author note in her 2020 biography, Stranger in the Shogun’s City. Stanley writes about her excitement at uncovering the story of Tsuneno, a woman born in the early years of the nineteenth-century, through letters and other family records. As a writer of historical fiction, I too have felt that thrill of looking through an unexpected window into the past, when an ordinary person, not one of history’s great names, becomes real to you. It’s hard to know why particular people from the past are so compelling to us. But it made perfect sense to me that Stanley spent years of her life painstakingly uncovering what is knowable about Tsuneno and her family.

When I write that Tsuneno was “ordinary,” I don’t mean to suggest that she was boring. She married (and divorced!) several times—something that would have been unthinkable to many of her European contemporaries. She fled her family to move to the big city, Edo—now part of Tokyo. And, as far as her brother was concerned, she was a problem. She was independent, strong-willed, and opinionated, i.e., she possessed exactly the same traits as most heroines in historical fiction. 

But Tsuneno was not a political actor on a global stage. Historical shifts—in Japan’s governance, economy, and relationship with the outside world—shaped her life, rather than the reverse. Stranger in the Shogun’s City is more about transporting us back to Edo, a city that no longer exists, than bringing us into Tsuneno’s psyche, which outside of fictionalization is unknowable to us. As a novelist, I couldn’t help but wonder if Stanley had ever considered turning Tsuneno into a character. Did she have a sense of what she might have said, felt, and thought, beyond the letters that the records have left us?

I think it’s notable that some of the reviews of the book that I read online, and even the biography’s Wikipedia page, don’t mention its subject’s name. Yes, Tsuneno’s life acts as an effective vehicle for transporting us to nineteenth-century Japan, but I hope I remember her—not just the lost world she inhabited.

What book with a nineteenth-century link would you like me to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want reviews, writing advice and more, delivered to your inbox once a month? Subscribe to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Edith Holler, Edward Carey (2023)

Welcome back to the Secret Victorianist and my Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I write about books published in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. Today, I’m breaking my own rules by reviewing a novel set in 1901, but, since that was the year of Queen Victoria’s death and this is mentioned in the opening pages of the book, I’m going to give myself an exception.

Our main character, Edith Holler, is a 12-year-old girl who lives in a theater in Norwich in the East of England. In fact, she has never left the Holler Theater due to a curse cast upon her as an infant. Carey’s love for the theatrical world is apparent on every page. I particularly enjoyed how he compares backstage to the different decks of a ship, the strong contrasts he draws between the front and back of the house, and the inclusion of actorly superstitions, such as referring to fire in the theater as “Mr. Jet.”

But as much as this is a book about the stage play world, it is also a book about Norwich. The character of Edith is an expert on the city she has only seen from the roof or through the windows of her theater, and Carey draws on a wealth of Norfolk history about and myth while embellishing upon it too with his vivid imagination.

I didn’t realize when I first picked up the book how much it would veer into the territory of historical fantasy, but I was delighted as the chapters became more and more unsettling and surreal. The Norwich of Edith Holler is overrun by deathwatch beetles, which locals make into an (apparently) appetizing paste. The problem? Edith suspects that murdered children are the secret ingredient in the city’s famous Beetle Spread, and her father is planning to marry into the family of (cannibal?) entrepreneurs behind the historic recipe. 

You’ll love this book, like I did, if you’re a fan of the bizarre and the macabre. I wrote before about Edward Carey’s 2018 Little. In both novels, Carey includes his own illustrations, bringing his creations to life. In Edith Holler, many of these illustrations are the pieces of a toy theater, which transported me back to the world of Pollock’s Toy Museum, a nineteenth-century gem I reviewed for the blog a decade ago. You can even download the pieces of the theater from Carey’s website if you fancy recreating the Gothic delights of the novel for yourself. I don’t know personally if I’d want to bring Edith and her dark world into my apartment, but I’ll undoubtedly be reading whatever Carey writes next.

Which 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. Want more blog posts like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for my monthly email newsletter here.

Review: Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, Rachel Cantor (2023)

You might be surprised that my review of Rachel Cantor’s 2023 novel Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, a retelling of the Bronte siblings’ lives, isn’t part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series. After all, those are the blog posts in which I dissect works of fiction written in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. However, Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, while it is a book about the Brontes, isn’t set in the nineteenth century at all. 

Instead, the sisters (originally five in number, but, for much of the novel, three) and their brother, whose names are constantly shifting, live not in Victorian Haworth, but in a city apartment building in a near-contemporary era. They navigate corporate jobs, as well as nannying. They interact with their doorman and, early in the book, with child protective services. 

Confused? You may well be for much of the novel. Every chapter takes a different form—e.g., as a script, a letter, a diary paper. The point of view shifts from sibling to sibling and, at each break in the narrative, we are asked to take a plunge into a different reality. Reader, I loved it.

As someone who immersed herself in the lives and works of the Brontes, as I researched and wrote my 2020 novel, Bronte’s Mistress, rarely have I felt so much that a book was written for me. There’s no spoon-feeding of readers here. This is definitely not the book to pick up if you’re learning about the lives of literature’s most famous family for the first time. But if, like me, you’re a Bronte fanatic, who knows the timeline of the siblings lives like the back of your hand, and who’s very familiar with their works and juvenilia, you’re in for a treat. 

What Cantor does so well is capture the closeness within the family and the imaginative childhood play that the Brontes continued well into adulthood. This is a novel about siblings who are obsessed with words and who use them to construct a sort of folie a quatre. And it’s about the conflict that occurs when those who have grown up in a separate world interact with the “real” world. 

I doubt that Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, despite the Brontes’ continued popularity, will reach a wide readership. But I hope that it reaches and delights the right readership.

Have you read the novel? I’d love to hear what you think! Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly emails about the Brontes, my writing and more? Sign up to my email newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Daughters of Nantucket, Julie Gerstenblatt (2023)

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.

Theatre Review: Being Mr. Wickham, 59E59 Theaters, New York City

It is a truth universally acknowledged that Austenites never tire of new takes on Pride and Prejudice (1813), so last month I joined JASNA NY’s outing to 59E59 Theaters to watch a one-man play about one of the novel’s most infamous characters. 

Being Mr. Wickham brings us George Wickham on his sixtieth birthday, still married to Lydia (nee Bennet) and reminiscing about the dramas of his youth. The play was co-written and performed by Adrian Lukis, who was the young Wickham in the beloved 1995 BBC adaptation of Austen’s novel, so it really did feel like we were all watching a familiar character age before our eyes. 

Revisitations of Pride and Prejudice range from the canonical (see, for example, my review of Janice Hadlow’s 2020 The Other Bennet Sister) to the more daring (check out my review of Katherine J. Chen’s 2018 Mary B), and this one-act play was firmly in the former camp. Audience knowledge of the source material was assumed as Lukis regaled us with updates on what has become of the other characters from the book, but there were no shocking revelations about the original story gained from entering the villain’s perspective. 

The set and sound design were smart, keeping the play visually interesting and giving us musical interludes between parts of the play respectively, and this helped keep the crowd engaged throughout—no small feat in what’s essentially a lengthy monologue. Lydia’s off-stage voice and a side plot about a drama Wickham is watching through the window gave the impression of a world beyond the stage, and I appreciated parts of the script that spoke to the wider historical context around Austen’s novel (e.g., war and politics). 

This is linked to what I found most interesting about the play, which was otherwise merely an entertaining trip down memory lane. Lukis and his co-writer Catherine Curzon turn Wickham into the poster child for the Regency period itself—a lover of romance and Romance, who models himself on Byron, and approaches life with a total dedication to having fun. The character’s frustration at the prudishness of the Victorian age he now finds himself living in was well-done and Lukis’s comments during the after-show conversation suggested he found parallels between Wickham’s reaction to a period of increased sincerity and his own responses to society and the direction the arts is taking today.

Have you watched Being Mr. Wickham, whether in New York or elsewhere? I’d love to know what you thought of it! Let me know what plays with a nineteenth-century connection you’d like to read me review next—in the comments, via Instagram, on Facebook, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates about my blog and other writing straight to your email inbox? Sign up for my newsletter here.

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Daughter of Doctor Moreau, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (2022)

Historical fiction meets science fiction in the latest book I’m writing about as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series, on novels written in the twenty-first century but set in the nineteenth. Moreno-Garcia’s The Daughter of Doctor Moreau (2022) is inspired by H.G. Wells’s classic tale of man playing God—The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896).

Readers of the original novel will recognize some common elements—the mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau, his alcoholic assistant Montgomery, and a host of Beast Folk (here, “hybrids”), the result of the scientist’s experiments. But there are significant departures too. While The Island of Doctor Moreau is set in the South Pacific, the action of The Daughter of Doctor Moreau takes place in a remote part of the Yucatán peninsula in nineteenth-century Mexico. And while our characters are isolated, they are not on an island—a backdrop of real political strife ups the stakes as the novel comes to its dramatic conclusion. Then too, there’s the daughter of the title. Carlota Moreau (the doctor’s illegitimate child) is one of our two point of view characters, along with Montgomery. There’s no straight man, like Edward Prendick, to mirror reader responses to the story—all the characters are implicated in the ethical questions at the novel’s heart, some in ways they don’t initially realize.

There’s lots to love here—a well-paced Gothic tale, a classic Victorian story in an unusual setting, and feminist commentary layered over the moral questions that Wells’s classic raises. I would have enjoyed a few more concrete descriptions of the hybrids, especially given the medical training Carlota receives from her father, to keep the novel more clearly in the realm of scientific speculation, rather than sheer fantasy. Another line Moreno-Garcia walks is in her depiction of the relationship between Montgomery and Carlota. While their age gap isn’t unusual for the period, she seems aware that modern readers may take issue with Montgomery’s attraction to a girl he first met as a child. As a result, the conclusion to the story between them seems a little non-committal, in a way that, for me, made the ending less satisfying. 

Did you read The Daughter of Doctor Moreau? I’d love to know what you thought of it. And do let me know which novel you’d like to see me review next as part of the Neo-Victorian Voices series—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Want monthly updates about this blog and my writing straight to your email inbox? Sign up for my mailing list here. 

Neo-Victorian Voices: The Parting Glass, Gina Marie Guadagnino (2019)

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.

Film Review: The Wonder (2022)

Back in 2018, I reviewed Emma Donoghue’s 2016 nineteenth-century-Ireland-set novel, The Wonder, for this blog—check out my full review here. Today, five years on, I’m back with a post about the book’s film adaptation.

The Wonder (2022) is remarkably true to Donoghue’s novel and doesn’t resort to Hollywood theatrics to enhance the story. It stars Florence Pugh as the English nurse, Lib, and she’s the ideal actor to pull off the role. Despite the slight plot and limited setting, Pugh’s facial expressions alone are enough to keep our interest for nearly two hours. The filmmakers also do a great job conveying the moody atmosphere, which makes the genre of the movie initially difficult to pin down. Are we in a horror film or is this psychological horror? movie watchers might ask themselves in the first thirty minutes.

One result of the faithful adaptation is that my original criticisms of the novel still hold. The romantic subplot is underdeveloped, and Lib never sways in her rational beliefs, although I would have loved to see Pugh grappling with whether to accept a supernatural explanation for her patient’s lack of appetite. The movie also introduces a new problem—a slightly bizarre and meta frame story, that reminds us that we are watching actors, not real people. This was a strange choice, but these short opening and closing minutes do little to detract from what is an entertaining watch.

Overall, I’d recommend The Wonder to fans of costume dramas and Pugh, and anyone with an interest in nineteenth-century Ireland. I loved how the film emphasized the trauma of the Great Famine, placing a disturbing story about one child who refuses to eat in a wider cultural and historical context. Writers may also wish to compare the novel to the screenplay to understand how small changes can play to different media.

What nineteenth-century film would you like the Secret Victorianist to review next? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. 

Film Review: Emily (2022)

As the author of a novel inspired by the scandalous lives of the Bronte siblings (Bronte’s Mistress), I’ve fielded a lot of questions recently about Emily, the 2022 biopic about the most mysterious Bronte sister, which only came to theaters in the US last month. Have I seen it? Do I like it? Is it accurate??

In this blog post I’m finally breaking down my response to the movie into two sections—highlights and lowlights. I’d absolutely love to hear your opinions too!

Highlights

Location/Setting: The movie was shot on location, largely in the Brontes’ hometown of Haworth. It was a thrill for me to see the Bronte siblings on film in the parsonage, where they lived, and on the moors where they would have roamed. Emily is beautifully filmed, and the movie would be worth watching for the Yorkshire landscape alone.

Acting: The actors, especially Emma Mackey who played the title role, were stellar (although clearly cast for their talent rather than for any family resemblance between the siblings!).

Boosting Bronte-Mania: Critics and audiences alike seem to have really enjoyed the film, which is great news for Bronte fans (and Bronte-related authors like me). I hope it encourages even more readers to pick up Wuthering Heights and the other Bronte novels.

Lowlights

Romance: I was saddened, although not surprised, that much of the movie was given over to a fictional romance between Emily Bronte and the curate, William Weightman. I understand the film industry’s desire to add bodice ripping to every period drama. However, there was enough scandal in the Brontes’ lives without making more up and I felt the romantic focus took away from who I believe Emily Bronte really was—reclusive, introverted, and not writing from personal experience when she penned the violent passion of Wuthering Heights.

Publication History: The end of the movie was truly horrifying to me, and not because of the Bronte siblings’ speedy deaths. The screenwriters took a huge liberty in changing the publication history of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and suggesting that Charlotte only penned her famous novel in response to Emily’s success.

Charlotte and Anne: Speaking of which, both Charlotte and Anne came out of the Emily biopic particularly badly. While Charlotte’s genius was chalked up to mere sibling rivalry, Anne’s writing aspirations were barely mentioned. I appreciate that this was a movie about Emily, but do we really need to keep putting Bronte sisters down to raise others up?

Sibling Relationships: Branwell, the Bronte brother, also gets a lot of screen time. What was most puzzling to me here was that the movie suggested there was most sympathy and kinship between him and Emily, presenting them as the “fun” ones, compared to an uptight Charlotte and generally useless Anne. In fact, Branwell and Charlotte were incredibly close, as were Emily and Anne—that’s why these were the pairings in which they wrote their juvenilia. There were some early references to the siblings’ childhood make-believe worlds, but this aspect of their relationships was severely underdeveloped in favor of making Emily and Branwell our bad girl/boy rebels.

Lydia Robinson: Finally, as the author of a novel all about Branwell’s affair with Lydia Robinson, his employer’s wife, I was of course intrigued to see how the movie would cover this episode. Sadly, nothing that happened at Thorp Green Hall, or the impact this had on the Bronte family, made it into the movie. Instead, there was just a brief and confusing scene featuring Branwell flirting with a married woman closer to home. Hollywood scouts, if you’re reading this, there was a real Bronte love affair, and one with the scope for multiple sex scenes—you just need to read Bronte’s Mistress. ;)

So, there you have it—this has been my take on Emily. The film is beautiful and well-acted and few of my gripes will matter if you don’t know much about the Brontes. But if you do, you might find yourself screaming at the screen like me… 

Bronte fans, do you agree or disagree? I’d love for you to let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.

Neo-Victorian Voices: Booth, Karen Joy Fowler (2022)

I imagine that many American readers will come to Karen Joy Fowler’s 2022 novel, Booth, with preconceptions about John Wilkes Booth (1838-1865), the man who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). However, having grown up outside the US, my knowledge of the killer and the theatrical family he was part of was essentially nonexistent before I sat down to read this latest book in my Neo-Victorian Voices series, about novels set in the nineteenth century but penned in the twenty-first.

Booth is one of those novels where we know what the climax will be—Lincoln will die. Suspense comes instead from anticipating the emotional and practical responses of the rest of the Booth family to John’s actions. We move between three of his nine siblings’ points of view in the novel, jumping from the mind of invalid and put-upon Rosalie to famous actor Edwin to beautiful and fiery Asia. This isn’t a book about a murderer—it’s a book about how a murderer’s actions affect those who love him most, so I was unsurprised to read in Fowler’s author’s note that she was partially inspired to write the book by considering the position of modern mass shooters’ families. 

The real-life Booths are wonderful fodder for a novel. In addition to John’s assassination of Lincoln, parental bigamy, alcoholism, daring and dangerous journeys across the United States, theatrical productions galore, and a stock of other juicy rumors were all at Fowler’s disposal when she sat down to write this book. If she’d made all this up some reviewers would have called Fowler’s novel farfetched but all the craziest details about the Booths are true, meaning, especially later in the book, there is, at times, too much incident. I would have liked some breathing room to give the characters even more page space to react and reflect.

Lovers of Shakespeare will enjoy how much Fowler makes of the importance of the bard to the Booth family culture and may also be intrigued by the altered versions of his famous plays most performed during the nineteenth-century. I also liked learning about other popular plays from the time period, and the history of costuming (the fact that actors owned their own expensive costumes for different roles was fascinating!). 

Coming back to the preconceived ideas readers may have about the Booths, Fowler handles the topic of slavery very deftly. Without lecturing, the novel explores how and why the siblings ended up with opposing ideas about abolition, and the divisions created by birth order, age gaps, and very different childhood experiences in a large family rang particularly true. This is the story of the Booth siblings, but secondary characters, including the family’s Black servants who are trying to buy the freedom of their children still trapped in slavery, give us an even broader perspective on the macro-forces at work in the country during this era. 

What novel would you like to see my review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist. Like what you read? Sign up to my email newsletter for monthly updates on my writing and blogging. 

Neo-Victorian Voices: Hester, Laurie Lico Albanese (2022)

Welcome back to the Neo-Victorian Voices series, where I review books written in the twenty-first century, but set in the nineteenth. Today it’s the turn of Laurie Lico Albanese’s 2022 novel, Hester, which was inspired by one of the great American nineteenth-century novels—Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850).

The title of the novel may be Hester, but our protagonist is the fictional Isobel, a young Scottish wife to an opium addict husband who immigrates to Salem, Massachusetts. There she encounters aspiring writer Nat Hathorne (who hasn’t yet altered the spelling of his name) and becomes a model for the character of Hester Prynne in his most famous novel.

Nat and Isobel’s emotional and romantic connection is at the core of the story, but the book isn’t just about Isobel as a muse—she is also an artist. A talented seamstress and embroider, just like Hester, Isobel has synesthesia. She sees letters in color, including, you guessed it, a scarlet “A,” but the condition isn’t one that’s talked about or understood. Isobel fears her ability may be magic passed down to her from an ancestor once accused of being a witch, a concern that dogs her when she learns the history of the 1692-1693 Salem witch trials, and the Hathorne family’s role in them. 

Familiarity with The Scarlet Letter is a plus, but not a prerequisite, for enjoying this historical novel, which errs on the side of realism over high drama. I most enjoyed the point of view of a character with synesthesia, the detailed descriptions of needlework, and the picture built up of nineteenth-century Salem. Short episodes detailing the exploits of Isobel's and Nat’s ancestors provided atmospheric background but didn’t add much to the overall plot. And the secrets harbored by Isobel’s Black neighbors were a little predictable, even though they were a welcome reminder of a broader historical context to the novel.

Overall, I’d recommend the book to lovers of nineteenth-century America settings and those who like their #histfic with just a hint of supernatural spice.

What novels would you like to see me review next as part of my Neo-Victorian Voices series? Let me know—here, on Facebook, on Instagram, or by tweeting @SVictorianist.