Molly Pohlig

Iseult is a young Victorian woman who hears her dead mother's voice in her head (her mother who died when Iseult was a child). Her mother guides her through life situations. However, Iseult has found a way to calm the voice--by cutting herself. Most of the characters in the book are not very likeable--Iseult is very odd. Her father is very nasty to her. The aunt is not very kind. The potential fiancés are not "swoon worthy." There is not much that happens in the book. I kept waiting for there to be "something" happening but there is not much of a plot. Mainly we are waiting for Iseult to find a fiancé and to stop cutting herself. Thanks to LibraryThing for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.… (more)

A very dark, psychological ghost story that feels not quite solid enough. The writing is technically excellent, the premise intriguing, and the fact that the plot develops slowly despite encompassing only about two weeks, ratcheting up the suspense as Iseult fluctuates between distraction and clarity, optimism and pessimism, is what propelled me through the book in less than three days. But I had a sense, going along, that I was taking in the story second hand--despite its predominantly third-person limited perspective focused on the main character--and missing some crucial details and background that might have anchored me in the moment.

Iseult is a 28-year old in (I believe) Victorian England, who has grown up bearing the burden of a rather graphic story of how an inexperienced midwife snapped her collarbone during birth; the bone punctured her mother internally and killed her. Iseult's father has kept her in mourning clothes her whole life as penance, and a Dickensian set of minor misfortunes has accumulated to make her an unattractive marriage prospect, despite her father's wealth.

All this could be enough to hang a story on, but Iseult's mother, Beatrice, has complicated matters by haunting the scar in Iseult's neck where her collarbone once broke through. Beatrice comments constantly on Iseult's life, delivering contradictory advice about dealing with social situations and suitors, leaving little room for Iseult's own thoughts. The perpetual distraction makes it difficult for her to carry on conversations, especially as she spoke directly to her mother during childhood until the adults in her life informed her that no one else could hear Beatrice and she had better stop at once. Still, responses to her mother still sometimes slip out of Iseult's mouth at inopportune moments, letting no one forget her childhood one-sided conversations and leading everyone to gossip that she might be a bit mad.

The only thing that can give Iseult a moment's peace is self-harm, which quiets Beatrice's voice for a time. Pins, needles, hatpins, embroidery scissors, pen knives... Iseult accumulates them all and uses them to varying degrees when she needs a break. Her mother retaliates with vitriol about how ungrateful her daughter is for spurning her valuable (often contradictory) advice, and occasionally causes spasms of pain inside Iseult's body.

No matter how strange Iseult is, she's getting older, and her father wants her off his hands both socially and financially. He needs to find a man as odd as his daughter, someone else of a similar social station with no other prospects...and finds him in Jacob, a man whose maintenance medications have turned his skin silver. Iseult quiets Beatrice's horror of the impending, humiliating alliance with pain and meets Jacob to assess her future, finds him more sincere and agreeable than expected, and cautiously begins to hope that they might be able to live peaceful, semi-private lives together--though she's uncertain whether she even wants anything more than an ally. Pulled in all directions by her mother, father, her feelings, and her inexperience with making her own choices, Iseult wobbles on a mental precipice as her wedding approaches. The ending contains a last-minute (but clearly telegraphed) twist with an unexpected supernatural element that feels out of place in an otherwise matter-of-fact ghost story.

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, the narrative feels a bit unmoored, detached and drifting about, unsure of where it ought to settle.

First, there's the setting. The book may be historical fiction, but aside from references to maids, midwives, dressmakers, and mourning wear, it takes a very long time to pin down where and when we are: a date of 1884 arrives on page 50, and I believe there was a reference to a British city that made me think we were in England...but given Americans' penchant for naming new towns after old-world ones, it could just as easily have been in the U.S. If it hadn't been for the back cover copy informing me that "Iseult Wince is a Victorian woman," I would have been adrift in time anywhere in the nineteenth or very early twentieth century until page 50, and I'm still not confident of the location.

Then, there are the characters. Our protagonist, Iseult, is fully developed, complicated, nuanced, human...but few others feel as though they had much depth. Iseult barely knows Jacob, but we know everything she does, so he has more personality that most. Iseult's father moves from sounding generally indifferent to her existence in the beginning to being actively emotionally abusive about a quarter of the way in. Her aunt and cousin have little in the way of personality, and no history to explain what they do have. Only for Mrs. Pennington, the housekeeper (one of only two mentioned servants), does Iseult spare the thought that perhaps she's being self-centered in not thinking of the woman's life outside how it affects her own...but even then, it was not clearly stated that Mrs. Pennington is the housekeeper, rather than an aunt (as I assumed), until page 35. Beatrice, despite existing largely in Iseult's mind, doesn't feel as though she has history or individuality, but it's not because the text suggests that she might be a figment of Iseult's imagination. On the contrary, the text goes out of its way to insist that Iseult's psychological war really isn't with herself. For example, Iseult describes her mother giving her answers to questions about natural history at school; we, the readers, are immediately informed that this is because Beatrice enjoyed the subject, but Iseult doesn't know this because of her father's refusal to talk about Beatrice. So we're told that Beatrice had some kind of personhood, though the text doesn't show it beyond cruel words that might, in other circumstances, seem like they could be Iseult's own internal self-criticism.

Finally, there's the tone, which swings from pitch-dark, with graphic descriptions of Iseult's self-harm and thoughts of death and suicide, to light humor that you might expect in a Jane Austen novel: quips about the quality of cake crumbs, ironic sayings about bad luck being only a state of mind, flippant comments about wedding fashion, and so on. Juxtapose this with Mrs. Pennington frisking Iseult for sharp objects after her daily walks and Beatrice calling her daughter a slattern and a bitch and, well...it's bizarre.

Is some of this confusion intentional? Almost certainly. It's emphasized throughout that Iseult's mother distracts her from being fully present in the world, and that feeling certainly came across to me while reading. Iseult is also constantly trying to get Beatrice to acknowledge that her advice is contradictory: be presentable for the gentlemen, but don't accept any suitors; don't be distracted in important moments, but listen to every word I have to say during them; I love you so much I gave up death for you but your father ought to have killed you in infancy and saved us all this trouble. Iseult longs for privacy and the ability to make her own choices, but also feels abandoned when Beatrice gives her the silent treatment. She dreams of a marriage that feels like living alone but likes the idea of an ally and might, somehow, even find Jacob a tad attractive if she could ever get past the unnatural color of his skin. She's been forced into lifelong mourning for someone who doesn't seem dead. Her emotions certainly come across on the page.

The page deserves a quick mention, too. In addition to that third-person limited with occasional forays into third-person omniscient to digress (a particularly long section about the horrible way Beatrice's father died completely derailed a scene), the formatting helps display the Iseult/Beatrice conversations. Their internal thoughts are in bold, lacking capitalization, with minimal punctuation, and with repeated words emphasizing especially strong feelings. Set apart from the regular action with a paragraph break before and after, it's visually as well as narratively clear how disruptive Beatrice is to Iseult's life.

As for the darkness throughout this book...don't underestimate it. There are graphic descriptions self-harm, extensive emotional abuse by parents, some physical abuse, eating disorders, nauseating descriptions of injuries, and contemplations of suicide, infanticide, and various forms of familicide. Yikes. Nothing I couldn't handle (though sounds callous saying that), but I'm aware that these could be seriously disturbing for many people.

How do I feel on the whole? Well, guilty for putting two stars on a book that I propel me along, with a clever concept, descriptive writing that I enjoyed, compelling main character, and effective conveyance of that character's emotional and psychological state; but also let down that the potential of the story and quality of writing couldn't quite support the not-fully-realized elements of setting, supporting characters, and uneven tone that didn't quite jibe with the (presumably) intended unevenness of Iseult's emotional state.

(P.S. Just noticed on rereading that I used several nautical metaphors. I'm still thinking fondly of my trip sailing with my family a week ago.)… (more)

I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer's program, and I'm grateful to the publisher for the opportunity to read this.

Which is not to say I liked this very much? Many other reviews have noted the extremely graphic descriptions of self harm, and I'll add a spoiler-ed warning for on page suicide but overall I also just didn't find it very interesting? I think the pitch of "gothic horror meets Victorian manners" book to me begs a little more comedy than there is room for in this book, which has like maybe one moment that gave me hope but otherwise did not feel that way.

It just felt deeply graphic in a way I did not personally enjoy--and normally I wouldn't object to that kind of thing, but it didn't feel like it added very much to the story either. Also the plot twist at the end did not seem to me to then lead to the conclusion it did? It just seemed weird? I hoped for a second that it wasn't going to end the way it did but then... it did.

You might like this if you need some gory gothic horror! It ultimately wasn't for me.… (more)