Taking cues from The Moonstone, Essie Fox’s newest book weaves colonialist India and Victorian spiritualism together into a riveting story. Our heroine, Alice Willoughby, has had the childhood that many British children must have in those days. She was born abroad in India, the daughter of an East India Company man and his English-born wife. Alice’s…
REVIEW: ELIJAH’S MERMAID by Essie Fox
In Fox’s follow-up to The Somnambulist, she eschews the sprawling country estate for the dank warren of the Limehouse district. Found floating in the river, like a Victorian Moses, baby Pearl is plucked from the Thames. But she enjoys no pharoah’s life. She is raised by the mysterious but efficient Mrs. Hibbert. The woman of the House…
REVIEW: THE SOMNAMBULIST by Essie Fox
Firstly let me say that the genre of the Victorian novel is safe. As anyone who reads my blog has probably noticed, I have a particular penchant for books about ghosts, Victorian England, a country house and a secret. I can’t get enough, it seems. And this one often reminded me of Gaslight. It’s told from…