Title: Haunting Violet
Author: Alyxandra Harvey
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Rating: WORTHY!
I have no belief in any of the paranormal or fringe nonsense: ghosts, vampires, UFOs, angels, demons, etc. I do not believe because there is no evidence that any of that is real, and there's much to argue rather strongly against it. What is a well-known fact is that people have very over-active and self-delusive imaginations. Having said that, I do enjoy science-fiction, or a good paranormal story, although it’s hard to find the latter! That's why I was thrilled to discover Haunting Violet.
I've just started this one and while I found it a bit pretentious of Harvey to change her name (Alexandra) to Alyxandra for the book covers, she can call herself whatever she wants if she writes like this. I wish I knew what it was that draws me in to one book after barely a sniff of chapter one, and yet another book repels me after only one paragraph, but whatever it is, if you bottle it, it was my idea! I hope that Harvey ensures that the thrill from the first page is maintained.
The female protagonist in this novel reminds me a lot of Gwen in Ruby Red, although the novels cover very different subject matter; however, if you liked that one and its sequel, Sapphire Blue, you'll very likely enjoy this one, too, but note that this is early days!
Violet Willoughby (last name straight out of Sense & Sensibility!) and her mother are socially-climbing frauds. Violet's mother (her father is nowhere in sight - she doesn’t even know who he is) defrauds people by posing as a medium and preying cruelly on the emotions of the bereaved. In appealing to the aristocracy with her shams, Violet's mother hopes to garner social rewards for herself and a beneficial match for her daughter. Violet, OTOH, is much more sanguine about these things, and has a great sense of humor.
They travel to the estate of Lord Jasper (seriously? Jasper?) with their maid, Marji and their 'manservant' Colin, an old childhood friend of Violet's from when their circumstances were a lot less elevated. Violet and Colin sneak down to the parlour late at night, and prep the room for their séance the next day. The only problem is that of the bellows, which they employ to send "spirit" drafts of cool air across the room. Violet ends up with them strapped to her leg! As the affair is about to begin, she hobbles cautiously over to take her seat at the table, but finds no empty chair. The one her mother has indicated is occupied by a dripping wet girl.
It turns out that this girl is a ghost, and for the first time, Violet, who doesn’t believe in ghosts either, is forced to accept that they believe in her, she can see and smell them. She later shocks that particular ghost's twin by revealing that she knows of her twin's murder, which was by drowning in a pond. It’s strongly hinted that the living twin stood to gain rather significantly from her sister's death, but whether this is merely a red herring remains to be seen.
So how amusing is it that I'm blogging this story featuring the drowned Rowena, and outside we're having a huge deluge (which is most welcome)?
Harvey has made a brave attempt to write a Victorian ghost story in an English setting, but I have to say she slips up here and there with terminology. There's also the occasional clunky statement such as: "...have tread the boards..." when it should be "...have trod the boards..." and even then I doubt that's a phrase which would have been used. OTOH, Violet is from a rather different culture from that of the people with whom she typically spends her time, so perhaps there's some wiggle room there!
Britain does have hornets, but I've never seen one there, nor heard the term used there. It’s always 'wasp', not 'hornet', and I've never heard crickets chirping in England. That's not to say they don’t, but I grew up in a relatively rural setting and I cannot recall ever hearing them at night. It always made me wonder what the heck that ubiquitous nocturnal chirping was in American films and TV shows precisely because I was unfamiliar with it! Oh, and we don't have 'stoops' in England (except as in She stoops to Conquer. That's an Americanism. But who knows, maybe in Victorian times that was the term they used? I find that hard to swallow though, because it comes from a Dutch term as I recall, so there was no reason for it to enter England in the way it entered the USA.
Violet is determined to find out what happened to the drowned girl, Rowena despite opposition, if only to get Rowena out of her life. She considers pretty much everyone a suspect, and is frustrated that Rowena doesn’t deign to point out who amongst the guests the murderer is, but one thing Violet fails to consider is that another ghost might be behind the large urn which nearly fell on her, and the chandelier which she avoids because Rowena got in her face. It doesn't help that Rowena seems unable to speak, but perhaps she doesn't speak because the guilty party isn’t present amongst the living?
Violet is preparing for her mother's next séance, so it would seem that a show-down is in the offing, and I have a three-day weekend coming up! And it's a rainy one! We've had a really unusual 4.4" of rain, almost all of it in the last 24 hours! Really weird, but highly appropriate to this novel!
You know, there's a lot to be said for the portability of ebooks and for the convenience of having a search function, but I could never write 'Ode to a Kindle' or 'Elegy in a Nook' because nothing kindles the urge to find a comfortable reading nook than does a hardback book. Haunting Violet is such a book, not only because it tells a great story (at least so far!), but also because it has a smell, and a feel, and a look, and a heft to it which ebook readers do not. By that, I mean that once you have your iPad or your Nook, you're stuck with the same thing no matter what book you read on it. It feels the same and it smells the same, and that will never change until you buy a new one, no matter which novel you're reading on it. And who really wants to be glued to a screen-swiper? Wouldn't you much rather be addicted to a great page-turner?!
Haunting Violet has a different look and feel to any previous book I've read. And it has added qualities that are impossible to get in an ebook. It has one of those weird and wonderful new covers that has a cool, slightly matte feeling to it, which imbues me with a compulsion to buy a book even when the book is utterly repugnant to me! Fortunately, I resist those impulses fiercely! When this book is opened, and I press my fingers to the cover and my thumb to the pages and spread the book a little more, it has an oddly addictive noise which results from the friction of the pages rubbing against one another. No ebook can do offer you this. And no ebook can give me the thrill that I felt when each of my own novels arrived in the mail, and I had a real physical thing to hold and examine, and which now accumulate side-by-side in shameless familiarity on one of my many book shelves. Yes, I'm a dinosaur, but dinosaurs are cool!
Anyway, on to Violet. The séance was quite a show-down, but I didn't guess what Harvey was going to do. What happened is that Violet's mother was exposed as a charlatan by the evil Caroline, governess of Tabitha, sister of the drowned Rowena. Whatever Carline's plan was, it worked, because Violet's mother insisted that they all leave in the middle of the night, returning home to London. Here's where the story lost suspension of disbelief (the SoD!) for me, because Harvey has the locals throwing rotten fruit and vegetables at the Willoughby's front door. I honestly could not believe that this would realistically happen. I honestly couldn't credit that this news could have spread so rapidly that it reached "the commoners" the very next day, or that people would even care that much.
But I was willing to let that pass because Harvey's writing has built up a significant level of goodwill within me, and indeed, it's fortunate for her that she has, because the relationship between Violet and Colin is taking off, and it has far too much YA cliché for my taste, including the 'hair falling into eyes' bullshit which frankly makes my stomach turn. There's many a slip twixt trope and trick, but to her credit, at least Harvey doesn't harp on the romance to an appalling level.
Xavier, Violet's putative fiancé, shows up to tell her that it's all off on account of his mother, but really on his own account, snotty spineless trash that they are. But this comes as a relief to Violet, although Violet's mother gives her a black eye over it, abusive bitch that she is. I don't think I've mentioned Xavier in this review because it was obvious that he was a nonentity in the grand scheme. Lord Thornhill, whom Violet discovered (on the night of her mother's ignominy) is actually her father, comes to visit, but only to tell her she's not wanted.
Violet finds that she is now seeing spirits regularly, including a charming schnauzer ghost dog which adopts her and hangs with her wherever she goes. That might prove significant for later plotting. Violet eventually and angrily reveals to her mother that she really can see spirits, and her mom then trapes her around town buying stuff and having a 'spirit photograph' taken which shows Violet surround by fuzzy spirits (and her little dog, too!), but in the background, clearly showing, is Rowena. Violet's mom sends a copy of the photo to Lord Jasper, and Violet is invited back to his estate - without her disgraced mother.
Needless to say (but I'll say it anyway, Violet returns in triumph and despite meanness, succeeds in convincing everyone that she is truly a medium. Not that this puts an end to the meanness and rejection, unaccountably. I have to say that some of this story borders on the ridiculous, especially the things which Violet gets away with and which are done to her given her position and circumstances, and the time-period in which this is set. For example, she's frequently left in a room with a guy and no one to chaperon her, as happens after the séance, when Peter (yes: the male organ of generation) is mean to her. It makes me wonder why Harvey chose the later nineteenth (or is that nine teeth?) century rather than today. There's a huge difference between having someone be a rebel in Victorian times and completely dispensing with suspension of disbelief.
But Violet finds out - more through luck than judgment - who the villain is. It wasn't one I'd overtly suspected, but it was a fairly obvious one. There were too many read herrings for my taste, and I found it inexplicable that Rowena became so powerful at the end of the novel but couldn't even tell Violet who the villain was when they first met?! There was no explanation offered for this, which means, of course, that it was pure desus ex machina rather than an integral part of a better plot. Harvey could have done a lot better there, but having said all that, I still really liked this story and I saw Violet especially as a worthy female protagonist, so I recommend this one.
