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1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a child disfigured by a red birthmark.
1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul's Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary's maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is Eliza never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? It is only on her visits to the Huguenot bookseller who supplies her master's scientific tomes that she realizes the nature of his obsession. And she knows she has to act to save not just the child but Mary and herself.
With exquisite prose, dark humor, and a historian's eye for detail, Clare Clark has created another transporting novel.
Review:
"Early in Clare Clark's new novel (following the well-received 'The Great Stink'), you could be forgiven for thinking you had picked up a bit of historical erotica. The first few pages are a deluge of longing, hot rushes, feverish skin, swollen mouths and slick muskiness. Eliza Tally, a poor village girl in rural early-18th-century England, has it bad for a dandy from a well-off family. Clark gives... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) Eliza voice to tell her own story, which she begins with overheated gusto: 'Oh yes, I was alive with desire for him. ... A whiff of the orange water he favoured, the touch of his silk handkerchief against my cheek, the remembrance of the golden fringe of his eyelashes ... any of these and less could dry my mouth and melt the flesh between my thighs.' She also informs us that 'there was nothing else left, nothing in the world but his fingers and the delirious incoherent frenzy of pure sensation they sent spiraling through me, as though I were an instrument vibrating with the exquisite hymns of the angels. Did that make him an angel?' Well ... no. He is no angel. Eliza is soon pregnant. In an effort to save their son from scandal, the young man's family arranges for Eliza to travel to London and work for an apothecary, Grayson Black. She assumes she is there for an abortion. What she finds instead is that her new master is a disturbed, mysterious character, with a prominent facial birthmark and sinister motives for accepting her into his home. Through excerpts from the apothecary's notes, the reader soon understands that at the heart of his work is the theory of maternal impression. Believers in maternal impression argued that the fetus was a shapeless vessel upon which the mother's thoughts and emotions could inflict all manner of defects during pregnancy. Everything from lustful passions, getting a fright or seeing certain animals at inopportune moments could scar an unborn child. An innocent affection for circus monkeys, for example, could result in the birth of a monkey-child. His desire to prove such theories, twisted by his own history, drives Black to inflict all manner of experiments on his female servants, who are completely at his mercy. Eliza, growing plumper week by week, is the perfect subject. When the experimentation broadens to include another of the maids, dimwitted Mary, the novel's tension ratchets up and careens toward a climax that is part gothic horror, part social commentary and part authorial wish-fulfillment. Along the way, Clark describes London vividly. This is the type of historical fiction that — far from romanticizing distant times — makes one thankful not to have been born any earlier. The city is a 'vast and fiendish carnival, an endless Hell stinking of tainted meat and swarming with footpads, swindlers, and whores. A place of the damned.' At the same time, her highlighting of the new dome of St. Paul's Cathedral points to a vibrant moment in London's religious, social and economic life. Clark, a trained historian and senior scholar at Trinity College Cambridge, clearly knows London's history in all of its contradictions. It is unfortunate, then, that Clark's narrator is so hard to like. Eliza consistently interprets characters and situations incorrectly, acts without thinking and then expresses amazement at revelations that readers will have grasped long before her. She focuses on deformity, expecting the worst of people so much so that she manages to see the worst — and helps to create it. Throughout her pregnancy she thinks of her unborn child with unwavering loathing. She describes it as a creature with hooked claws, a 'contemptible maggot.' She fantasizes about aborting it without a trace of maternal turmoil: 'It cheered me a little to think upon it, the white worm in the rank darkness of a foul cellar, sucking desperately, hopelessly for air as it drowned, abandoned in a filthy mess.' For most of the novel she's no kinder in her opinion of Mary. True, she eventually is spurred to action on Mary's behalf, but her efforts are so fumbling that the greatest tragedy of the novel is arguably one of her own making. It is possible that my contemporary sensitivity asks for qualities in Eliza that she should not be expected to possess. For some, she will seem a fitting product of her time: inquisitive and superstitious, full of promise and yet relishing despair, dreamy and pessimistic at the same time, erudite and yet lacking in common sense. In an interview, Clark recently wondered, 'If we, as modern human beings, find it difficult to behave well, how much more difficult was it for someone in the 18th century for whom life was cheap and filth a daily hazard?' This is a question her characters stumblingly explore within the novel, with both mixed answers and mixed results." Reviewed by Carolyn See, who may be reached at www.carolynsee.comDavid Anthony Durham, whose most recent novels are 'Acacia' and 'Pride of Carthage', Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)
Review:
"As she did so successfully in The Great Stink, Clark again transports readers to another time and place in this mesmerizing tale of life in the mean streets of 18th-century London." Library Journal
Review:
"Readers who are not put off by the graphically documented grotesqueries and perversions will be drawn into the spellbinding gothic netherworld Clark spins." Booklsit
Review:
"Clark has talent and energy to burn. But she's burning both up in wasteful displays of gratuitous pyrotechnics." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis:
MAIN SELECTION, BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB
FEATURED ALTERNATE SELECTION, QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB and DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB
{Sara - not sure whether to put this book club stuff on front flap or here - see what you think}
PRAISE FOR THE GREAT STINK
"In rich Dickensian detail, Clark creates the whole city teeming with life and decay, but she keeps the focus on a few fascinating characters in desperate straits . . . it's a rich work of history and a gripping exploration of the unmentionable currents that run beneath the surface of our lives--and it reeks of talent."--The Washington Post Book World (Best Book of the Year)
"The Great Stink is a crackerjack historical novel that combines the creepy intrigue of Caleb Carr, the sensory overload of Peter Ackroyd and the academic curiosity of A.S. Byatt."--Los Angeles Times
"A captivating historical thriller."--People (4 stars)
"Clark's triumph is that she makes us see and smell everything we politely pretend not to, and she even manages to give the miasma its own kind of beauty . . . the book is literally breathtaking."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors Choice)
"Heres a talent to watch." –The Seattle Times
"An efficient blend of limpid storytelling, psychological acumen and Dickensian sympathy for the underdog, this fine first novel brings Victorian London to life . . . With prose this inviting and this sleek, gentle reader, you'll want to dive right in." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Synopsis:
"Clare Clark writes with the eyes of a historian and the soul of a novelist." – Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a child disfigured by a red birthmark--and no wonder, since everyone knows that mothers who do not protect themselves from shocking sights could turn their unborn children into monsters.
1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul's Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary's maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child–a wealthy merchants son--from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is she never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? And why is she having terrifyingly vivid dreams of ferocious dogs, her greatest fear?
On one of her visits to the friendly Huguenot bookseller who keeps the apothecary supplied with scientific tomes, she finally realizes the nature of her master's obsession. And when she learns that Mary too is pregnant, she knows she has to act to save not just the child but Mary and herself.
From the highly acclaimed author of The Great Stink comes a consuming, passionate, darkly humorous tale set amid the clamor and chaos of eighteenth-century London.
Clare Clark's first novel, The Great Stink, was a New York Times Editors' Choice, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Quality Paperback Book Club New Voices Award. She lives in London.
Jena, October 24, 2007 (view all comments by Jena)
This is a very well researched book, so if you're interested in life in the 18th century, this book describes the life (though not typical) of a maidservant, medical theories, and opium addiction. However, I can think of historical fictions with better plots and characters; the plot here hinges on bizarre research of the master of the house and the characters prove inconsistent. At the end, I felt that the author was in a hurry to be done with the book.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (5 of 7 readers found this comment helpful)
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"As she did so successfully in The Great Stink, Clark again transports readers to another time and place in this mesmerizing tale of life in the mean streets of 18th-century London."
"Review"
by Booklsit,
"Readers who are not put off by the graphically documented grotesqueries and perversions will be drawn into the spellbinding gothic netherworld Clark spins."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"Clark has talent and energy to burn. But she's burning both up in wasteful displays of gratuitous pyrotechnics."
"Synopsis"
by Firebrand,
MAIN SELECTION, BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH CLUB
FEATURED ALTERNATE SELECTION, QUALITY PAPERBACK BOOK CLUB and DOUBLEDAY BOOK CLUB
{Sara - not sure whether to put this book club stuff on front flap or here - see what you think}
PRAISE FOR THE GREAT STINK
"In rich Dickensian detail, Clark creates the whole city teeming with life and decay, but she keeps the focus on a few fascinating characters in desperate straits . . . it's a rich work of history and a gripping exploration of the unmentionable currents that run beneath the surface of our lives--and it reeks of talent."--The Washington Post Book World (Best Book of the Year)
"The Great Stink is a crackerjack historical novel that combines the creepy intrigue of Caleb Carr, the sensory overload of Peter Ackroyd and the academic curiosity of A.S. Byatt."--Los Angeles Times
"A captivating historical thriller."--People (4 stars)
"Clark's triumph is that she makes us see and smell everything we politely pretend not to, and she even manages to give the miasma its own kind of beauty . . . the book is literally breathtaking."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors Choice)
"Heres a talent to watch." –The Seattle Times
"An efficient blend of limpid storytelling, psychological acumen and Dickensian sympathy for the underdog, this fine first novel brings Victorian London to life . . . With prose this inviting and this sleek, gentle reader, you'll want to dive right in." —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Synopsis"
by Firebrand,
"Clare Clark writes with the eyes of a historian and the soul of a novelist." – Amanda Foreman, author of Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire
1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a child disfigured by a red birthmark--and no wonder, since everyone knows that mothers who do not protect themselves from shocking sights could turn their unborn children into monsters.
1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul's Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary's maid, a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child–a wealthy merchants son--from scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is she never allowed to look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues his experiments? And why is she having terrifyingly vivid dreams of ferocious dogs, her greatest fear?
On one of her visits to the friendly Huguenot bookseller who keeps the apothecary supplied with scientific tomes, she finally realizes the nature of her master's obsession. And when she learns that Mary too is pregnant, she knows she has to act to save not just the child but Mary and herself.
From the highly acclaimed author of The Great Stink comes a consuming, passionate, darkly humorous tale set amid the clamor and chaos of eighteenth-century London.
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