I was delighted to be invited onto the blog tour for ‘Voices of the Dead’, the fourth novel featuring Dr Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. Thanks for the copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.
Blog Tour: ‘Voices of the Dead’ by Ambrose Parry
Tag: spiritualism
Book Review: ‘The Spirit Engineer’ by A J West
I am so ashamed that this book sat on my NetGalley shelf for so long! I was missing an absolute treat – and I’m not alone in my opinion as this was recently voted as Bert’s Books’ Book of the Year by readers on Twitter.
The story opens in Belfast in 1914, a city still grieving the loss of the Titanic two years before. A scientist, William Crawford Jackson, is working at the Institute and living in the city with his wife, Elizabeth, and three children. Having suffered a personal loss in the Titanic sinking, Elizabeth is reeling with grief and, like many of the city’s residents, open to the new ideas of spiritualism that oppose everything her sceptical husband stands for. When he hears mysterious voices at one of Kathleen Goligher’s seances, he starts on a quest to discover the truth…
Wow, this is such a cleverly-plotted book! As I followed William on his lengthy journey to find answers, I found myself really unsure what to think about spiritualism – and this is an absolute strength of the novel. Are the practitioners genuine conduits between the living and the dead, or are they frauds looking to play on other’s grief? Are those who attend the seances merely naive and silly, or pitiable figures whose emotions are being manipulated? West keeps his cards incredibly close to his chect until the end of the novel. As William vacillated in his own thoughts, I found myself being pulled along and as keen for answers as he was.
The setting of the book is also a triumph – a perfect historical moment for this story and some genuinely creepy settings, from the Goligher’s seance room to the austere halls of the Institute with their sinister statues. There are some truly frightening elements in play here and West uses them well to create a sense of rising horror – the images of the Titanic victims that keep being recalled are horrific and vivid and the sensory description slightly stomach-churning at times.
William Crawford Jackson is a brilliant choice of narrator – he is both based on a real person (as is Kathleen Goligher) and wildly unreliable as he narrates his experiences. His voice is distinctive and strong – he starts out as a kind of mildly comic Edwardian man in the model of Charles Pooter from ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ and then expands into something much more multi-dimensional and complex. Lady Adelia Carter begins as a snobby Lady Bracknell character, yet also takes quite a journey over the course of the novel. The characterisation is pitch-perfect throughout, and there is the added bonus of cameos by Arthur Conan Doyle (himself an advocate of spiritualism) and Harry Houdini (for the history nerds like me!)
I can also imagine this is a gorgeous book to have a physical copy of as there are some beautiful illustrations that start each of the novel’s main sections.
There is so much to love about this novel and I recommend it highly to all lovers of cleverly-plotted and immersive historical fiction. For me, this is up there with the best writing by authors like Sarah Waters, Laura Purcell and Andrew Taylor. I really wish I had read this sooner and it is one that will stay with me for some time to come. The end – when it comes – is surprising and eye-opening and entirely unforeseen. I defy anyone to predict it – although you will have fun trying.
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Blog Tour: ‘The Shape of Darkness’ by Laura Purcell
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for Laura Purcell’s ‘The Shape of Darkness’.
This tour is organised by Random Things Tours and the book is published today (21st January)!
From the Publisher:
As the age of the photograph dawns in Victorian Bath, silhouette artist Agnes is struggling to keep her business afloat. Still recovering from a serious illness herself, making enough money to support her elderly mother and her orphaned nephew Cedric has never been easy, but then one of her clients is murdered shortly after sitting for Agnes, and then another, and another… Why is the killer seemingly targeting her business?
Desperately seeking an answer, Agnes approaches Pearl, a child spirit medium lodging in Bath with her older half-sister and her ailing father, hoping that if Pearl can make contact with those who died, they might reveal who killed them.
But Agnes and Pearl quickly discover that instead they may have opened the door to something that they can never put back.
‘Dripping with atmosphere with a corkscrew plot, Laura Purcell just gets better and better’
STACEY HALLS
‘Darkly addictive and utterly compelling. Reading Laura’s books is like watching a horror movie where you have to keep hiding behind a cushion because you dread what is coming next, but you simply have to find out!’
RUTH HOGAN
‘Wow. I think it’s her best one yet and that’s saying something. A story of a woman haunted in every way possible, I think it’s a future gothic classic’
MARTYN WAITES
My Review:
I’ve loved Laura Purcell’s previous books so I am very grateful to NetGalley and the publisher for my review copy – as always, opinions are entirely my own.
Gothic spookiness is really my thing, so I have absolutely lapped up Purcell’s previous books – I particularly liked ‘The Corset’ and ‘Bone China’ where the creepiness focused on inanimate items that seem to have more power than they should. I was expecting something similar from ‘The Shape of Darkness’, but feel that this book delivers something different altogether.
In this novel, our main character, Agnes Darken, is a silhouette artist working in early-Victorian era Bath. She has struggling health and relies on her art to support the family she has been left with after the death of her sister, Constance, a number of years earlier. However, bad things start happening to those who sit for her silhouettes and – as mysterious deaths begin to stack up – she searches for answers from a medium who seems to be able to communicate with the dead. The dead speak through a strange child, Pearl, and Agnes gets caught up in the girl’s own problems with devastating consequences.
One of the real strengths of this book is the way that Purcell ramps up the spookiness. This is a book absolutely packed with memories of the dead and their ghosts – the séance scenes are genuinely creepy and the tension is high for a lot of the novel. It certainly kept me reading as I wanted to understand the strange events and occurrences – as a life long cynic, I was desperately trying to find rational explanations for what was happening (often with no success!)
Another element that I really enjoyed was the sense of mystery – as murder mysteries are my favourite genre, I was absolutely engrossed by trying to work out who was behind the deaths and even if there was a logical pattern or set of clues to latch on to. Every time I felt that I was getting close, Purcell whipped the rug out from under my feet and I would have to start again while balancing the supernatural possibilities. There were a lot of twists and revelations and my head was spinning a bit by the end!
The period details were also well integrated into the novel – it felt like a real historical world, although I don’t know that it was specifically Bath as I don’t know that city. The gloom of the houses, the dirt and danger of the streets, the domestic details – everything felt authentic. In fact, some of it was rather stomach-churning – Pearl’s father’s illness, for example, is described in rather gruesome detail.
I did struggle a little with the fact that Agnes was not a particularly strong character – I like my protagonists with a bit more sass, whereas Agnes was weakened by her recent illness, pining for a man and seemed to mostly accept her role as subservient female. I do understand that this was the societal norm, but I longed for her to stand up and do something at times.
Overall, this is a beautifully written, well-researched and engaging Gothic novel. It hits the spot for those who like a bit of supernatural terror while also being absolutely rooted in the grim everyday realities of those living in fairly poor conditions in the 1850s. It’s cleverly plotted and will certainly keep you racing through the pages to the end.
About the Author:
Laura Purcell is a former bookseller and lives in Colchester with her husband and pet guinea pigs. Her first novel for Raven Books, The Silent Companions, was a Radio 2 and Zoe Ball ITV Book Club pick and was the winner of the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award, while her subsequent books – The Corset and Bone China – established Laura as the queen of the sophisticated, and spooky, page-turner.
laurapurcell.com |@spookypurcell