Tag: Mystical

The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

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The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

Published by Bloomsbury Raven on February 2nd 2023

Available from West End Lane Books and All Good Bookshops

What They Say

Be careful what you wish for… it may just come true.

At The Mercury Theatre in London’s West End, rumours are circulating of a curse. It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage.

Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees. What Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in nature.

On stage, it’s as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the Muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress. But when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders if the rumours are true, and fears that when the Muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.

What I Say

I have been a Laura Purcell fan from the first moment I read her debut novel The Silent Companions (if you haven’t read that yet – I would absolutely recommend it, but please don’t come back to me if you need to sleep with the lights on for a week after reading it!).

As well as being brilliantly written, and evoking period detail and palpable tension in every page, I love Laura’s novels because they depict women who face situations where their resolve and morality is tested, and show how even though they may be constricted by the social expectations of the time, that they want only to do what is right for them and their family.

In The Whispering Muse, the protagonist is a young woman called Jenny Wilcox, who finds herself as the head of the family after her elder brother Greg leaves the family in disarray after stealing from Jenny’s employer and taking all they have. Jenny is dismissed from service, and she and her siblings face an uncertain future.

When she secures a job as a dresser at The Mercury Theatre, where Greg worked before her, due to the generous and gregarious Mrs Dyer, the owner’s wife, it seems that maybe Jenny has a chance to secure a future for her family.

Jenny is made dresser to the star of the theatre, a fiery and demanding woman called Lilith, who is determined to be famous and adored, and seemingly has Mr Dyer enthralled and ready to indulge his leading lady on and off stage. Mrs. Dyer is not blind to what is happening, and tasks Jenny with spying on Lilith, and offers her money to do so. Although she is torn, Jenny understands the difference this money could make to her family and agrees to become her spy.

Right from the start, Jenny and Lilith clash. Lilith is every inch the diva Jenny suspects her to be, and her dedication to her acting is bordering on the obsessive. Lilith is consumed by her desire to be the most feted actress of her generation, whatever the cost. There is an incredibly awkward scene at a party when Lilith is given a watch depicting Melpomene, the Greek muse of tragedy by Mr Dyer. This turns out to be the very watch Mrs Dyer was desperate to own, having belonged to an actor she adored, and this only fuels her suspicion and hatred of Lilith even further. Bound by circumstance, Jenny now becomes another pawn in Mrs. Dyer’s game, as she forces her to carry out schemes to attempt to drive Lilith away from the stage and the precious watch she desires.

As Jenny gets closer to Lilith with the aim of helping Mrs Dyer, Jenny sees Lilith in an altogether different light. A young woman who is driven to succeed certainly, but also a woman who is vulnerable, who knows that her worth is measured in the tickets she can sell and the money she can make for the theatre. Jenny and Lilith form an unlikely friendship as they understand who is actually the biggest threat to both their lives, and by coming together, they can both get what they want -at a price.

Ever present is the spirit of Melpomene, the muse which seems to not only push Lilith to give the best performances of her career, but also starts to take her over and seep its way into every part of the theatre, causing accidents that cannot be explained, and deaths that create such distress and uncertainy, that no one feels safe. Laura does this so convincingly, that it never feels forced or simply done for shock value. From the very start of the novel, the spectre of The Mercury Theatre looms large, and the world inside seems so far removed from the one outside, that you feel a real sense of dislocation and wariness from the start.

It would have been very easy to make The Whispering Muse melodramatic, and reliant on tried and tested gothic tropes to unsettle the reader. However, in the hands of Laura Purcell, it becomes a novel that places Lilith, Jenny and Mrs Dyer directly at the heart of the narrative, and their needs and desires are the driving force behind the decisions they make. The consequences of all their actions come together to propel the story forward, but it is the unknown force of Melpomene, and the havoc that she wreaks as she seeks to possess the theatre and all those on the stage that is the most dangerous and unstoppable part of the novel that we cannot predict.

The Whispering Muse is a novel filled with dramatic tension, but it also brings to the fore issues such as the commodification of women, duty and desire, social classes, and the transient nature of fame. In having Lilith, Jenny and Mrs Dyer as the main characters, we see three women all at different stages of their personal and professional lives, and I felt that their depiction showed that they had more in common that they would ever want to admit. Melpomene may be the undefinable spirit that wreaks havoc on those who fall prey to her, but the desires and drive of the women inside the Mercury Theatre imbues the novel with an even more compelling and powerful story.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Bloomsbury Raven for my gifted proof copy.

Where I End by Sophie White

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Where I End by Sophie White

Published by Tramp Press 13th October 2022

Available from West End Lane Books and all good Bookshops

What They Say

My mother. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body just like the water in the walls of the house… Teenage Aoileann has never left the island. Her silent, bed-bound mother is a wreckage, the survivor of a private disaster no one will speak about. Aoileann desperately wants a family, and when Rachel and her young baby move to the island, Aoileann finds a focus for her relentless love.

What I Say

When the first line of a novel starts ‘ My mother. At night, my mother creaks’, you know that this book is certainly going to be nothing like you have read for a while!

In Where I End by Sophie White, we are introduced to Aoileann, a young woman who lives with her grandmother and bed bound mother in a remote cottage, where they can live their lives away from the curious and disgusted looks from the locals on the island. Aoileann’s mother is not from the island, but her father was. He is now only a monthly visitor to the island, and every day Aoileann and her grandmother are responsible for the daily care of her mother.

Let’s be clear from the start, that this is not a caring and loving relationship that exists within the walls of the crumbling and decrepit cottage. Aoileann’s mother has physically degenerated, and is referred to as ‘it’ or ‘bed thing’ by the women. They have a daily routine in place to care for her, and they rely on rope and winches to lift and move the mother to the bathroom where she is cleaned and to the kitchen where she is strapped in to eat, and back to her bedroom where she is stripped, cleaned and changed.

They resentfully clean her and change her nappies, hurl insults at her, talk over her and treat her in ways that are incredibly emotionally difficult to read. and make us aware of how inhumane they are in their treatment. We are given no explicit reason as to what happened to Aoileann’s mother or why, but all we are witness to is the incredible anger and resentment that both women – but especially Aoileann have towards her.

Aoileann’s daily life is punctuated by routine and thankless tasks, interspersed with taunting and humiliating her mother for the life she cannot have and the mother she cannot bond with. It is while scrubbing the floor of the cottage that she starts to see markings scratched on the floors where she realises that her mother has attempted to escape during the night, and when Aoileann writes them all down, she realises her mother has secrets and a past that that will slowly come to light which will impact her world in ways she cannot imagine.

Aoileann is treated with suspicion and malice by the islanders, and doesn’t interact with them. She has no friends and little time for herself. Her only respite is when she can escape to swim in the sea, away from the responsibilities and demands that caring for her mother brings.

It is when she is on the beach that she meets Rachel, an artist and single mother of a young baby that Aoileann finds herself immediately drawn to. Watching Rachel with her baby causes Aoileann to see the maternal connection that she has never had, the love that so many take for granted she has never experienced. She becomes fixated with Rachel and longs to be as important to her as her baby seems to be.

When the local wool factory is deemed by the mainlanders as ripe for redevelopment and investment, Aoileann’s grandmother is employed to collate her remembrances of the island, which means she now leaves Aoileann alone with her mother. Aoileann sees this as a way for her to spy on Rachel, to ingratiate herself into her lfe so that she will become indispensible to her, and this where the novel becomes even more unsettling as events spiral and twist in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

The world inhabited in Where I End is a finely balanced and yet all encompassing one. When you are reading the scenes set in the cottage, you feel how incredibly claustrophobic and exhausting the domestic sphere is, where everything is tightly controlled. Every day is centred around caring for the mother, with three women trapped in a world with no joy. Yet this is also balanced by the wildness and uncontrollable and mystical natural world of the island, that Aoileann yearns for, and the other residents who are grotesquely fascinated by Aoileann and her mother.

It is a novel that encompasses so many things. What it means to be a mother, the mother daughter relationship, duty, desire and anger too. In Aoileann, White has created a character who works so well because we are fascinated as to why she hates her mother, yet still cares for her. We see how Aoileann is desperate to love and be loved, but comes to hate her mother for the life she is forced to live.

Where I End is an incredibly layered and nuanced novel and White does not shy away from tackling challenging themes, and continually confronts the reader with events and interactions that are at times very difficult to read. At the heart of this novel is Aoileann and all the thoughts, feelings and emotions she has never been taught to express. We are witness to a young woman’s twisted logic as we come to understand she can only articulate what she wants in an increasingly destructive and horrific way as she finally decides to take control over her future.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Sarah Davis-Goff and Tramp Press for my gifted proof copy.

Chouette by Claire Oshetsky

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Chouette By Claire Oshetsky

Published by Virago Press on 4th November

Available from West End Lane Books and All Good Bookshops

What They Say

A fierce and darkly joyful fable about mothering an unusual child from an electric new voice.

Tiny is pregnant. Her husband is delighted. ‘It’s not yours,’ she tells him. ‘This baby will be an owl-baby.’ Tiny’s always been an outsider, and she knows her child will be different.

When Chouette is born, Tiny’s husband and family are devastated by her condition and strange appearance. Doctors tell them to expect the worst. Chouette won’t learn to walk; she never speaks; she lashes out when frightened and causes chaos in public. Tiny’s husband wants to make her better: ‘Don’t you want our daughter to have a normal life?’ But Tiny thinks Chouette is perfect the way she is.

As Tiny and her husband fight over what’s right for their child, Chouette herself is growing. In her fierce self-possession, her untameable will, she teaches Tiny to break free of expectations – no matter what it takes.

Savage, startling, possessed of a biting humour and wild love, Chouette is a dark modern fable about mothering an unusual child. It will grip you in its talons and never let go.

What I Say

When I heard about Chouette, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The premise that a woman is carrying an owl-baby that she has conceived after sleeping with an owl just seems to be so incredibly eccentric that it couldn’t possibly work.

The thing is, it absolutely does. Chouette may be like nothing you have read before, but this is a novel about parenting a child who does not conform to what the world expects, and as a Mum of a child with special needs, it could not have been more pertinent and emotional.

When Tiny discovers that she is pregnant, she is stunned. She doesn’t want a baby, but is insistent that this is an owl-baby, not as she calls the other babies, a dog-baby. Her husband doesn’t understand what she means and is concerned for her mental health. Yet as the pregnancy progresses, Tiny becomes bonded to the owl-baby she is convinced she is carrying, and is determined to love it.

As Chouette grows in Tiny’s womb, she starts to understand the intense ferocity of maternal love, and irrespective of her husband and his family, she is driven by a need to ensure that she keeps her baby safe. Having always felt to be an outsider herself, she doesn’t feel that she fits in with her husband’s family, and Chouette’s behaviour during pregnancy only serves to distance her from her husband who feels unable to connect with his wife. When Chouette is born and taken to the special babycare unit, her husband is away, and her in-laws rush to her side, but Tiny decides to take her daughter home in spite of the medical advice to the contrary. Tiny is literally blinded by love, and knows already that although her daughter is very physically and intellectually different to other babies, she is hers, and only she can understand what Chouette needs.

While up to this point the novel has seemed to have a strange and mythical tone, as you are never really quite sure what is real, what is imagined, and whether Tiny’s insistence as to the identity of Chouette’s father is representative of an altered mental state or is in fact a reality, suddenly one thing becomes very clear.

Chouette is not like other children.

The way in which Tiny and her husband and his family react to her is an interesting and at times startling one. Tiny sees Chouette as a child to be cherished and loved, that her need to be fed differently and her lack of social skills and non-conformity is something to be sympathetic to, while her husband sees her as something to be ‘cured’.

Her husband refuses to rest until Chouette is like all the other children, so he decides to consult as many experts as he can, to undertake whatever therapy they recommend so that his daughter who looks and acts so differently can be moulded to fit in and not stand out in a crowd. While he wants to ‘fix’ Chouette however he can, Tiny can’t understand why the world can’t accept her daughter as she is. This for me is the crux of the novel. Oshetsky has to make this difference so extreme in a way, so the reader can see how polarised Tiny and her husband are.

So often, people who either have no experience of children who are different, or for whom the thought of having a child that does not fit in is overwhelming, will seek to find a way in which they can make that child fit into the world around them.

All too often, and I am absolutely speaking from experience here, your child is regarded as either a problem that needs to be solved, or an issue that they don’t know how to deal with, because they have no clue what to do with them. It is far easier to attempt to fit them into a convenient societal box, or give up when they can’t be fixed as oppose to looking at the child and working out a bespoke plan to try and give that child the best life possible. We have been stared at, avoided, commented on and made to feel unwelcome numerous times. Children like Chouette are not things to be mended or moulded, they are individuals who deserve love and understanding in order that they are able to fulfill their potential.

The reason this novel works so well for me aside from the emotional connection I feel to the subject matter, is the sense that you never really know what is real, what is mystical, what is imagined and what is the truth. Claire Oshetsky has created a world so like our own, but is always slightly removed and the prose and events in this novel seem to have a sense of other worldliness about them. Tiny’s understanding of how important nature and the environment is to Chouette for her well being is balanced by her husband’s insistence on science and theory, and culminates in him making a devastating choice as to how Chouette should be cured. His decision sets off a chain of events that no one could have foreseen, and Tiny is forced to make some life changing decisions.

The prose is all encompassing and filled with a real sense of the power of nature and its inablity to be contained. Tiny and Chouette are always right at the heart of the novel, and the way in which they are portrayed serve only to make the reader want them to live the life they want. Tiny’s husband, and indeed all the other characters aside from Tiny and Chouette are portrayed as almost annoyances, in that their self serving interference only makes the reader want Chouette to find her own way even more deeply.

If you are looking for a straightforward narrative novel, then Chouette is probably not your kind of book. If however, you want to read a story that blurs and pushes the boundary of the everyday and the magical, and also exquisitely details the frustrations, heartache and joy of having a child that is different to others, then Chouette should absolutely be on your reading pile.

I absolutely loved it.

Thank you so much to Celeste at Virago for my gifted finished copy.

You can buy your copy of Chouette at West End Lane Books here.