Very well written stuffed full of imaginative descriptions of 18th century life amid the haves and have-not of London. A bit hard to follow at first and at times when the "monster" spoke but it was totally engaging and had me reading long into the night. Love is an unlikely companion to this hard scrabble life and you are brought through it painfully but it brought tears at the end. I did enjoy it immensely. ( )

I bought this at least a year ago after reading the book flap and I admit, admiring the book cover. I am intereseted in historical fiction and though I had never heard of the author or the book, I thought that I would be in for a treat.

I was a little right, and a little wrong.

I enjoyed this novel on many levels - Clark's descriptions of physical sensations and appearance were skillfully drawn. However, sometimes I thought that the language was reaching and that Clare was striving too hard for dramatic effect. I wavered repeatedly between curiosity and annoyance. ( )

Clare Clark really throws herself into the task of portraying just how horrid conditions were in London in the 1700s. In fact, she does so rather overzealously, as she nearly drowns the novel in the process. London isn't just harsh and dirty, it's a ghastly mire of shit and despair. The antagonist doctor and his household aren't just woefully misguided and unempathetic, they are roundly horrible people with no real motivation beyond being horrible for its own sake. None of the few sympathetic characters are terribly appealing. Eliza herself is not even particularly likeable as a protagonist. She's sniveling, selfish, petty, totally uninsightful, and hates everyone. Even Eliza's attempts to save Mary from the Blacks towards the end of the novel are insufficient to garner her any redeeming sympathies from the reader--it's just too little, too late.

There is some suspense in the plot, but I found that I cared so little for the characters that when the next unspeakable thing in an unending chain of unspeakable things happened to them, I was neither very surprised nor very interested in how each character would react. The theory of maternal impression and other medical practices from the time would actually be fascinating topics for Clark to focus on if she had done so in any detail. Eliza's experiments with herbal remedies are used only as a plot device and not discussed beyond mentioning the names of a few herbs here and there (and really, she must be a pathetic herbalist indeed if she can manage to grow up in the home of a medical woman and not know what a newborn child looks like), and the machinations of Mr. Black seem more a result of an innate evil than any cruel medical experiment; aside from the fact that the theory of maternal impression is barely mentioned outside his occasional letters, he's just too much of a two-dimensional character to have motivations more complex than that.

I'm not sure why I even bothered to finish this novel. If I was hoping it might improve as the plot went on, I was sorely mistaken. I would like to have those few hours of my life back. ( )

Disappointed. She is one of my favourite novelists following The Great Stink. Read that. ( )

From the first sentence of the first chapter I was hooked: ‘Afterwards, when I knew that I had not loved him at all, the shock was all in my stomach, like the feeling when you miscount going upstairs in the dark and climb a step that is not there’. Clare’s style is descriptive without ever becoming flowery, shocking without (usually) aiming simply to shock and strongly focused through the physical world. Her narrator is expressive, honest and bold.
Eliza Tally is at once a shocking subject and a frequent event in 1718: she is pregnant but unmarried, a willing conquest of a wealthy young man who refuses to accept any responsibility. Her initial wanton behaviour prevents us from viewing Eliza as a real victim, but her subsequent treatment nevertheless provokes our sympathy. She is sent to London to work for an apothecary; in return for her service, he will remove her ‘worm’. Or will he?
Unbeknown to Eliza or her mother, Mr. Black intends to conduct highly dubious research into ‘maternal impression’. The author heightens the readers’ awareness by prefacing each chapter with a written material related to the apothecary. This is where much of the most disturbing material in the book is gradually revealed, or suggested. This technique suggests that Mr. Black’s mind may contain the real monsters and allows the reader to understand slightly more than Eliza.
In London, which is vividly described as a land of filth and movement in a manner that recalls Dickens, Eliza meets the dubious members of this strange household. As time passes, she becomes close to the ‘idiot’ girl Mary and to a bookseller who may offer her a chance of redemption. The kindly elder gentleman for whom she feels only gratitude reminded me again of Dickens and I hoped that Eliza would escape becoming merely a docile miss. Indeed, my own reservation about this story is the way in which Eliza seems, after a shocking opening, to become as conventional and safe as she can by the end of the tale.
Overall this was a fascinating read as it gave a real insight into the conditions endured by Londoners, women, children and the mentally disabled during the eighteenth century. The scientific ideas are shocking but well researched and intriguing. Eliza’s frantic attempts to escape the darkened shop create a gothic atmosphere of threat, mystery and madness. ( )