Published By: John Murray
Pages: 256
Released On: 14/01/2027
England, the near future. Dumped by her boyfriend, fired from her job and estranged from her parents, Hazel Whitlock signs up for a sideshow act in Blackpool. The seaside resort has revived all the cancelled old favourites: the Wonder Midgets, Britain’s Fattest Boy, the South Sea Cannibals . . . and the Starving Bride.
On display in the iconic Blackpool Tower, with a ravenous lion prowling the enclosure, Hazel must lie in silence while spectators view her and pass judgement on her body. Time compresses and warps in this strange space, and the past returns to Hazel with full and shocking force.
As the days tick down and the Showman entices ever larger crowds through the door, Hazel’s old friend Gilda becomes increasingly worried for her welfare. Councillor Frank Marsh, meanwhile, investigating the stability of the Tower, is alarmed at his findings – but his concerns fall on deaf ears.
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and John Murray for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
I love Catherine’s books so much. Which sounds like I’ve read them all, but apparently this is only my second one, which astounds me. I do own two others though and I must put them higher on my TBR list.
She just has such a way with words. Her very sentence structure, word choice, the simple things is just so masterful that it becomes effortless to read. And it’s so descriptive, the everyday, often mundane things are described with such poetry that it’s a joy to behold.
The female form an discourse about the female form and women’s bodies and how everyone has an opinion on it is a topic that I hoped we would be in the past now, but it’s there still and it’s managed so well. It’s sensitive and it’s quiet but powerful. Sadly so many people, young girls mostly, have these ideas about the perfect body and so this might be a bit close to home for some. And whilst it’s a novel and fictional, I think it would be a good book (if handled sensitively) for young girls to read as it doesn’t shy away from these difficult topics and it’s important to have these discussions.
I may be reading too much into it but I think it also talks about the idea of observation, the intrusion of privacy, whether volunteered or taken from us, that we can’t get away from now. Whilst it’s about Hazel being observed, it could easily reflect our lives now being permanently on social media.
It’s weird because it’s set in the near future and yet because of choices made in the story (I won’t spoil them) it has this real nostalgic 1920s-1950s vibe about it. Because of the showgirls and the circus acts and the “freak acts”, that you think of as being at seaside resorts in those times. That helps, even if it’s unintentional, to add to the slight oddness of the book. There’s something unsettling about it but you’re not entirely sure why but it keeps you on your toes.
We get Hazel’s story but we also get Frank’s story (which is albeit shorter) which I thought would get suffocated by what was going on in Hazel’s story, but it didn’t. It held up it’s own and made an interesting contrast to the main story.
I was expecting some sort of fantasy or supernatural story, which this isn’t. And that’s not a bad thing, I was actually pleasantly surprised just how accessible it was. It was a lot deeper and introspective and serious than I had first thought.
I think it’s just the right length. It’s not too short that you can’t get invested, but it doesn’t drag out. And the quick, short pace of it adds to the claustrophobic feeling of it all.
The only thing I’d say, and it’s not a negative, just something I kept coming back to because it’s such a personal thing. I prefer character development over plot, although I know a lot of people think otherwise. And because of that, I felt the plot did overshadow the characters somewhat, and I would have preferred a bit more depth to the characters as well as the intense plot. But again, that’s purely a personal taste thing.
What I’ve learnt just after two books is that they are never quite what you think. The premise might be easy to grasp, but the execution is always a bit different, giving us an enjoyable story but with this added edge or twist that takes it out of the ordinary and into the extraordinary.
