Blanche Beunon is twenty-four: an ex-equestrian performer in a Parisian circus, transformed into an exotic dancer and whore in the harsh light of the New World. The year is 1876 the place San Francisco, an ambitious, squalid, seamy town on the make where everything is for sale and the inhabitants are remaking themselves as swiftly as the city, which constantly shifts and unfurls, sprawling out across the landscape. It’s a murder mystery where not only the murderer and motive but also the intended victim are uncertain, and you don’t get the full picture until the very final pages, by which point you feel thoroughly immersed in Donoghue’s seedy fin-de-siècle world. Once again the novel is inspired by one of those wonderful pieces of ‘found’ history that she keeps turning up, plucked from the newspapers and scandal-sheets of history, and once again it’s a masterful piece of storytelling: more so, I would say, than Slammerkin in that it manages to keep you absolutely riveted all the way through. Having enjoyed Slammerkin so much, I was very much looking forward to Emma Donoghue’s new book (all the more so because I’m currently stranded halfway through her Sealed Letter, which I had to give back to the library).
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May 2023
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