Clare’s second foray into the Victorian past discloses new information about her unusual heroine.
Private investigator Lily Raynor, who solved a complicated mystery in The Woman Who Spoke To Spirits (2019), is barely eking out a living for herself and her employee, Felix Wilbraham, when she’s offered a job by Georgiana Long, a teacher at Shardlowes, a school for women in the Fens. The school is supported by the Band of Angels, a shadowy philanthropic organization founded by the MacKillivers, a pair of Scottish twins, one of whom has a mental illness. Several of the Shardlowes girls, many of them mentally or physically challenged, have gone missing from the school. Eager to avoid a scandal, Miss Long asks Lily to pose as a nurse at the school. Lily trained as a nurse, a profession she loved yet left after a mysterious incident in India. She goes to Shardlowes feeling a good deal of trepidation, but she fits in easily and soon begins to uncover disquieting facts about the missing pupils while Felix, with the help of his journalist housemate, tracks down the first girl to go missing, Esme Sullivan, whose body turns up in the water in Portsmouth. Traveling to Scotland, Felix discovers things that make him fearful for Lily, who’s uncovered information that puts her in grave danger when another child is stolen. The experience that formed her in India makes her determined to reveal the truth.
Mystery and social commentary combine in a heartbreaking and sadly relevant tale.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-7278-9045-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
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An actress and her entourage are kidnapped by Russians in Bohjalian’s uneven thriller.
In 1964, Hollywood’s gossip rags are agog as movie star Katie Barstow marries gallerist David Hill and takes her inner circle along on her honeymoon. And an adventuresome honeymoon it is—on safari in the Serengeti with aging big-game hunter Charlie Patton, who once helped Hemingway bag trophies. But Katie is not the star of this ensemble piece. The populous cast—a who’s who at the beginning is indispensable—includes Katie’s publicist, Reggie Stout; her agent, Peter Merrick; her best friend, Carmen Tedesco, a supporting actress who plays wisecracking sidekicks; and Terrance Dutton, Katie's recent co-star, a Black actor who's challenging Sidney Poitier's singularity in Hollywood. With obvious nods to Hemingway’s worst fear—masculine cowardice—Bohjalian adds in Felix Demeter, Carmen’s husband, a B-list screenwriter who reminds his wife of Hemingway’s weakling Francis Macomber. Felix seems a superfluous double of David, who feels inadequate because Katie is the breadwinner and his father is CIA. Then there’s Katie’s older brother, Billy Stepanov, whose abuse at the hands of their mother shaped the psychologist he is today; Billy’s pregnant wife, Margie; and Benjamin Kikwete, an apprentice safari guide. Thus, a proliferation of voices whose competing perspectives fragment rather than advance the story. The kidnapping plot seems less designed to test each character’s mettle than to exercise Bohjalian’s predilection for minute descriptions of gore. The most heartfelt portrayal here is of the Serengeti and its flora and fauna, but none of the human characters net enough face time to transcend their typecasting. The motives behind the kidnapping might have lent intrigue to the proceedings, but foreshadowing is so slight that the infodump explainer at the end leaves us shocked, mostly at how haphazard the plot is.
Perhaps A-list screenwriters will be able to spin TV gold from this sketchy treatment.Pub Date: May 10, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54482-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2022
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The Herculean efforts required to assemble the Oxford English Dictionary are retold, this time from a fictionalized, distaff point of view, in Williams’ debut novel.
Esme Nicoll, the motherless young daughter of a lexicographer working in the Scriptorium—in reality, a garden shed in Oxford where a team led by James Murray, one of the OED’s editors, toiled—accompanies her father to work frequently. The rigor and passion with which the project is managed is apparent to the sensitive and curious Esme, as is the fact that the editorial team of men labors under the influence of Victorian-era mores. Esme begins a clandestine operation to rescue words which have been overlooked or intentionally omitted from the epic dictionary. Her childhood undertaking becomes a lifelong endeavor, and her efforts to validate the words which flew under the (not yet invented) radar of the OED gatekeepers gain traction at the same time the women’s suffrage movement fructifies in England. The looming specter of World War I lends tension to Esme’s personal saga while a disparate cast of secondary characters adds pathos and depth. Underlying this panoramic account are lexicographical and philosophical interrogatives: Who owns language, does language reflect or affect, who chooses what is appropriate, why is one meaning worthier than another, what happens when a word mutates in meaning? (For example, the talismanic word first salvaged by Esme, bondmaid, pops up with capricious irregularity and amorphous meaning throughout the lengthy narrative.) Williams provides readers with detailed background and biographical information pointing to extensive research about the OED and its editors, many of whom appear as characters in Esme’s life. The result is a satisfying amalgam of truth and historical fiction.
Who tells your story? Williams illuminates why women needed to be in the room where, and when, it’s written.Pub Date: April 6, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-16019-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: March 3, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2021
Categories: HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION | LITERARY FICTION
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