by Laura Purcell ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2019
Inspired by an 18th-century murder case involving a milliner and her daughter, Purcell’s slightly flawed novel expertly...
A Victorian do-gooder meets a young seamstress, on trial for murder, who confesses to killing her employer with just a needle and thread.
Wealthy heiress Dorothea Truelove devotes her charitable work to visiting the female inmates of Oakgate Prison. When she receives a note from the prison matron informing her that “we [have] another one,” Dorothea is thrilled because this is her chance to prove her ideas about the science of phrenology. Convinced that a person’s character, including “the propensity to kill," is mapped out on the cranium, she is eager to interview her subject, 16-year-old Ruth Butterham, who stands accused of murdering her mistress, “slowly, by degrees.” With each visit, Ruth tells Dorothea the sad and brutal story of grinding poverty and devastating loss that led to her involuntary servitude and appalling abuse at the dressmaking shop of Mrs. Metyard and her daughter, Kate. A talented sewer, Ruth is convinced she has a supernatural ability to kill as she stitches her emotions into the garments she makes. Of her victims, some were accidents, she tells Dorothea, but others she hated, like Rosalind Oldacre, her tormentor from school, and the abusive Metyards. The rational Dorothea believes Ruth is lying, but the girl's phrenological profile reveals a “wonderfully retentive memory" and a tendency toward honesty. Meanwhile, Dorothea, who is secretly being courted by police constable David, must fend off her widowed father’s efforts to betrothe her to Sir Thomas Biggleswade. Purcell (The Silent Companions, 2017) cleverly plays two unreliable narrators off each other here. Ruth is more compellingly drawn, but Dorothea’s obsession with head bumps is downright creepy. Who is the dotty one? Unfortunately, the supporting characters are not as fully fleshed out, primarily serving as plot devices in the novel’s sudden and rather clunky climax.
Inspired by an 18th-century murder case involving a milliner and her daughter, Purcell’s slightly flawed novel expertly threads splashes of Grand Guignol violence with dark gothic atmosphere to make for a chilling and engrossing read.Pub Date: June 18, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-14-313405-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2019
Share your opinion of this book
More by Laura Purcell
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 7, 2020
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.
Norwegian novelist Jacobsen folds a quietly powerful coming-of-age story into a rendition of daily life on one of Norway’s rural islands a hundred years ago in a novel that was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize.
Ingrid Barrøy, her father, Hans, mother, Maria, grandfather Martin, and slightly addled aunt Barbro are the owners and sole inhabitants of Barrøy Island, one of numerous small family-owned islands in an area of Norway barely touched by the outside world. The novel follows Ingrid from age 3 through a carefree early childhood of endless small chores, simple pleasures, and unquestioned familial love into her more ambivalent adolescence attending school off the island and becoming aware of the outside world, then finally into young womanhood when she must make difficult choices. Readers will share Ingrid’s adoration of her father, whose sense of responsibility conflicts with his romantic nature. He adores Maria, despite what he calls her “la-di-da” ways, and is devoted to Ingrid. Twice he finds work on the mainland for his sister, Barbro, but, afraid she’ll be unhappy, he brings her home both times. Rooted to the land where he farms and tied to the sea where he fishes, Hans struggles to maintain his family’s hardscrabble existence on an island where every repair is a struggle against the elements. But his efforts are Sisyphean. Life as a Barrøy on Barrøy remains precarious. Changes do occur in men’s and women’s roles, reflected in part by who gets a literal chair to sit on at meals, while world crises—a war, Sweden’s financial troubles—have unexpected impact. Yet the drama here occurs in small increments, season by season, following nature’s rhythm through deaths and births, moments of joy and deep sorrow. The translator’s decision to use roughly translated phrases in conversation—i.e., “Tha’s goen’ nohvar” for "You’re going nowhere")—slows the reading down at first but ends up drawing readers more deeply into the world of Barrøy and its prickly, intensely alive inhabitants.
A deeply satisfying novel, both sensuously vivid and remarkably poignant.Pub Date: April 7, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-77196-319-0
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Biblioasis
Review Posted Online: Jan. 12, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2020
Share your opinion of this book
More by Roy Jacobsen
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen ; translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
BOOK REVIEW
by Roy Jacobsen & translated by Don Bartlett & Don Shaw
by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
Awards & Accolades
Likes
26
Our Verdict
GET IT
New York Times Bestseller
IndieBound Bestseller
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
Share your opinion of this book
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.