Author: Lauren Owen
Publisher: Random House
Rating: worthy
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review.
When I first began reading this, I thought that I would not be able to complete the novel. For the first couple of pages it seemed too dense - the text too tightly packed both visually and intelligibly, but after that, I got into it and changed my mind about it completely. Instead of feeling discomfort, I felt charmed by it. The author really seems to have captured the feel of the era, although I confess some surprise at seeing 'surprize' spelled with a 'z', and crêpe spelled with an 'a', as 'crape'. I've never seen crêpe spelled that way before, although it is perfectly permissible; however with regard to the misspelled 'surprise', there is no excuse. It appears about a dozen times, but everywhere else, it’s spelled correctly. I have no idea what the deal is with that!
This novel is set in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Most of the action takes place in 1892 (as judged by the performance of Oscar Wilde's play, Lady Windermere's Fan). We're briefly introduced to the childhood years of Charlotte and James Norbury, children raised in the declining sprawl of Aiskew Hall in Yorkshire, from whence my own parents hailed. These two children are largely unsupervised, but they fail to grow as wild as they might have done. On the contrary, both of them tend towards reserve as they mature.
As a young child, James suffers the discomfort of being confined in a faux priest hole at the very moment his father dies. The two children loved to undergo what they termed 'ordeals'. These were just simple, silly, childhood dares and adventures, one of which was to be confined in the tiny and dark hole, from which there was no escape from the inside. They were not even supposed to be playing in the library, much less locking each other away. When James went in the hole, Charlotte was supposed to count to one hundred and then let him out, but she was forced, because of her father's illness, from attending on him and it was some time before she was free to return and release her younger brother. Given that these childhood incidents appear to play no part in the rest of the story, I'm confused as to why they were included.
James was more angry than traumatized by this incarceration, and for some reason withdrew into writing at that point. Later he attended Oxford and moved to London to pursue writing poetry, while his sister remained at Aiskew, now confined to living in the lodge rather than in the increasingly decrepit hall itself. James, who initially lived alone and led a very retiring life, finds himself forced to seek new lodgings and begins rooming with a distant acquaintance from Oxford, the charming and enigmatic Christopher Paige.
The two of them are not alike; whereas James is reserved, slightly shy, and contemplative, Christopher is lively, outgoing, and also a borderline alcoholic, so it would seem that their paring was ill-fated, yet they manage to get along reasonably well, and within the space of a year, they're getting along rather more famously than is considered proper or even legal for the period. The way the author handles these early scenes is remarkable and appreciated.
I ran into problems thrice in continuing to read this: the first of these was when the excellent narrative of James's activities was rudely interrupted by the diary of Augustus Mould. When I first typed that just now, it came out as 'Augustic mould', which pretty much describes how it felt to read. Owen tried to create a "realistic" diary which contained mistakes and crossings out, but the effect - in a galley copy described as an 'uncorrected proof' - was to make me think that the author had screwed up. It took me some little while to figure out that this was intentional. However, even had I not fell into this misunderstanding, I still would have found this diary to be uninteresting, populated as it was with the mundane and the trivial. From that point on I skipped everything associated with his name, and by doing so, I didn't miss anything, it seems.
The second problem was of a similar nature, where once again we departed the main story (which to me is that of James and Charlotte) and side-tracked into some minor character running into problems one deserted night. I found both of these departures to be unappealing, and they slowed down the story and larded it up with unnecessary distraction.
The third issue was when Charlotte hooks up with two people: Adeline, a French girl living in London, and Shadwell, the father of Adeline's fiancé. Here Owen yet again drops into a side-story - of how Adeline got into the Vampire business. This slowed the story down unnecessarily. As it happens, this particular detour was interesting, so it wasn't as bad as the other two, but I would still have liked the novel better without this string of interruptions.
The biggest problem overall was that there were too many parts with little or no interest or relevance to the main story, and the ending was dragged out way beyond what was required. Having said that, there was, as I indicated to begin with, much to like about this novel and the way it was written. Owen is talented and brave; she has, for example, no problem killing off heroes which is commendable because it's daring and unexpected. I do resent that she killed off one of my favorites!
In reading this I wavered between not feeling it was worthy of a recommendation, and feeling that it was, so I'm going to err on the side of generosity and rate this as a worthy read in the hope that with some encouragement, Lauren Owen will turn out increasingly engrossing novels as time goes by. Her talent is too good to be stifled, but she does need some editing! So in short, I rate this a worthy read bearing in mind the caveats as I've mentioned.
