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
BOOK REVIEW
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella,...
A deceptively rich and cumulatively powerful novel.
At the outset, this might seem like minor Morrison (A Mercy, 2008, etc.), not only because its length is borderline novella, but because the setup seems generic. A black soldier returns from the Korean War, where he faces a rocky re-entry, succumbing to alcoholism and suffering from what would subsequently be termed PTSD. Yet perhaps, as someone tells him, his major problem is the culture to which he returns: “An integrated army is integrated misery. You all go fight, come back, they treat you like dogs. Change that. They treat dogs better.” Ultimately, the latest from the Nobel Prize–winning novelist has something more subtle and shattering to offer than such social polemics. As the novel progresses, it becomes less specifically about the troubled soldier and as much about the sister he left behind in Georgia, who was married and deserted young, and who has fallen into the employ of a doctor whose mysterious experiments threaten her life. And, even more crucially, it’s about the relationship between the brother and his younger sister, which changes significantly after his return home, as both of them undergo significant transformations. “She was a shadow for most of my life, a presence marking its own absence, or maybe mine,” thinks the soldier. He discovers that “while his devotion shielded her, it did not strengthen her.” As his sister is becoming a woman who can stand on her own, her brother ultimately comes to terms with dark truths and deep pain that he had attempted to numb with alcohol. Before they achieve an epiphany that is mutually redemptive, even the earlier reference to “dogs” reveals itself as more than gratuitous.Pub Date: May 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-59416-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.
Plenty of gore from days of yore fills the 12th entry in Cornwell’s The Last Kingdom series (War of the Wolf, 2018, etc.).
The pagan warlord Uhtred of Bebbanburg narrates his 10th-century adventures, during which he hacks people apart so that kingdoms might be stitched together. He is known to some as the Godless or the Wicked, a reputation he enjoys. Edward, King of Wessex, Mercia, and East Anglia is gravely ill, and Uhtred pledges an oath to likely heir Æthelstan to kill two rivals, Æthelhelm and “his rotten nephew,” Ælfweard, when the king dies. Uhtred’s wife, Eadith, wants him to break that oath, but he cannot live with the dishonor of being an oathbreaker. The tale seems to begin in the middle, as though the reader had just turned the last page in the 11th book—and yet it stands alone quite well. Uhtred travels the coast and the river Temes in the good ship Spearhafoc, powered by 40 rowers struggling against tides and currents. He and his men fight furious battles, and he lustily impales foes with his favorite sword, Serpent-Breath. “I don’t kill the helpless,” though, which is one of his few limits. So, early in the story, when a man calling himself “God’s chosen one” declares “We were sent to kill you,” readers may chuckle and say yeah, right. But Uhtred faces true challenges such as Waormund, “lord Æthelhelm’s beast.” Immense bloodletting aside, Cornwell paints vivid images of the filth in the Temes and in cities like Lundene. This is mainly manly fare, of course. Few women are active characters. The queen needs rescuing, and “when queens call for help, warriors go to war.” The action is believable if often gruesome and loathsome, and it never lets up for long.
This is historical adventure on a grand scale, right up there with the works of Conn Iggulden and Minette Walters.Pub Date: Nov. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-06-256321-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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