Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1315355 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

'a slow and fearful rot...'(p.56)
What a pretentious and self satisfied book-and with such little justification!Being an expert in Victorian literature does not unfortunately mean you can write a good story.Lots of lush and vivid description in a pseudo- Victorian style just makes the lack of characters,plot and sense all the more obvious.Only made it as far as P.100 and decided life was too short,especially with the new John Harwood awaiting.If you want a proper nineteenth century type thriller,try Michael Cox's 'the Meaning of Night'.

Sinister and beautiful yarn from the days when doctors all
wore top hats.

I thought 'they don't write 'em like this any more'. I was wrong.

You can tell just from reading this book the amount of thought that has gone into writing it. The authentic elements make it easy to believe that the author Sarah Blake has a doctorate in Victorian literature and I have found no reason to doubt the validity of that. I was still on the first chapter when I thought to myself 'I bet she's read a few Victorian novels' and my belief was reinforced by further reading. If complex, ghostly, period fiction is your thing you could do a lot worse than giving this a go. At over three hundred pages it's plenty of book for the money.

The main draw back for me was the girly cover, I very nearly didn't bother at all because of that, perhaps the publisher should have brought out an alternative, in tandem, with a bit more of a blokey theme. Over all though a very impressive debut, I for one hope to see more from Blake in the future.