Review: The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins

The Silence Factory by Bridget Collins is a dark and mysterious dual narrative novel and I received it for Xmas in 2024.

Sophia Ashmore-Percy accompanies her husband to Kratos, a remote Greek Island in the 1820s and records her experiences in a journal. Her husband is seeking to capture a rare specimen to study and their relationship breaks down as his obsession intensifies.

Decades later in Victorian England, Henry Latimer is an Aurist working at Argyll's shop when he meets Sir Edward Ashmore-Percy, who invites him to Carthmute House to treat his deaf daughter. While there, Henry learns more about Sir Edward's factories and the production of Telverton silk.

Named for the town where his factory is located, Telverton silk is made from the silk of the mythical Pseudonephila spider. One side of the silk has the ability to block all sound, whilst the other side contains a mysterious warp and whisper. Those exposed to the wrong side of the silk can hear whispers, suffer headaches, or develop an ill queasy feeling with some even questioning their sanity.

Henry becomes obsessed with the potential applications of the silk, readily ignoring the side effects:

"Silence is not only silence, sir, it is attention - it is sanity. It is sleep for infants, medicine for invalids, rest for the working man - it is money for the man who must think or starve. We build walls to shelter our bodies from the world, but we leave our minds open to assault on every side. The Telverton silk, sir, is not a gimcrack. It is the greatest discovery of our age." Page 55

The factory buildings where the unique silk is harvested and woven is extraordinarily loud and sends their workers deaf due to the machinery deployed in the production. As I was reading about the brutal working conditions, it brought to mind the exploitation of child labour in the cotton mills during the industrial revolution.

Both Kratos and Telverton in Northern England are fictional, however this frees the author to create dark and gothic settings in both locations. Despite a real fear of spiders, thankfully I didn't have any nightmares about the mythical creatures at the heart of The Silence Factory but I did find myself wishing I could hold Henry's small square of Telverton silk for just a moment.

Bridget Collins has a knack for producing dark tales that straddle multiple genres and feel unique to her writing style. The Binding was brilliantly unique and made my Top 5 Books of 2019 list, and I thoroughly enjoyed The Betrayals in 2020, giving it 4 stars in my review. The Silence Factory is completely different again; it's historical fiction meets gothic fantasy and I highly enjoyed it.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: The Death of Mrs Westaway by Ruth Ware

Published in 2018, The Death of Mrs Westaway is a stand alone mystery novel and my seventh book by Ruth Ware. Like a heroin addict, I'm chasing the high of my very first Ruth Ware novel The Turn of the Key but again didn't manage to reach those giddy, gasp-worthy heights.

Harriet Westaway goes by Hal and when her mother died, Hal took over her job as a tarot card reader in a kiosk on Brighton Pier. Being hassled by a local loan shark, Hal can't believe her luck when she receives a letter advising that her grandmother has died and left her an inheritance. Not knowing much about the Westaway family yet confident it's a mistake, Hal ventures to the Cornwall estate for the funeral, hoping to stay quiet about any mixup and leave with enough to pay her loan shark and outstanding bills.

Needless to say, Hal gets more than she bargained for and the reader is drawn in by the tumbledown estate and fractured family members who don't seem to be mourning the death of Mrs Westaway at all. Secrets abound in this gothic mystery and someone is out to harm Hal.

The setting was gloomy and the atmosphere was tense which kept the pace rolling along however I felt there was too much internalising by our main character as she weighed the ethics of carrying out her deception and then struggled to unearth the truth of her parentage and the death of her mother. This slowed the pace right down and seemed a little repetitive at times.

Ultimately The Death of Mrs Westaway by Ruth Ware will appeal to mystery readers who love a wealthy family with flawed characters, a neglected family estate in need of repair, a nasty as hell housekeeper and generational secrets that will blow it all apart.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola

In 1857, Audrey is on her way from London to the Isle of Skye to interview for the position of Assistant to a collector of folk tales. Miss Buchanan is a spinster and folklorist and rarely leaves her family home of Lanerly Hall; a dilapidated estate owned by her brother.

Some of Mr Buchanan's tenants (referred to as crofters) have been evicted, and Mazzola doesn't shy away from the effects of the Clearances in Skye around this time. The landscape is bleak and the crofters are struggling to make a living and keep food on the table, regularly relying on superstition and folklore rather than religion. Miss Buchanan recognises that local folk tales aren't being shared as freely within the community any more and the displacement of crofters from the land to make way for sheep farming means these stories are being lost.

The crofters distrust their landlord and believe there's something evil about Lanerly Hall so Audrey's job is to earn their trust and record as many stories as she can.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Lanerly Hall but when a local girl washes up dead on the beach nearby and another goes missing, the crofters believe it to be the work of faeries. Meanwhile, Audrey believes someone is responsible and we're given a number of potential suspects.

"Better to be terrified than miserable. If the reality is that people die of starvation and illness, drown themselves out of shame, or leave their impoverished homes in search of a better life, then maybe it's preferable to think that the fairies are taking people away to serve some greater purpose." Page 131

The author creates a dark and foreboding gothic atmosphere full of superstitions, myths, folklore and fairytales. In her historical note at the end of the novel, Mazzola explains the idea for this book came from the West Ham vanishings in the 1880s where a number of children and young adults disappeared from the East End of London. She also shares that the many folk tales relayed to Audrey in the book are adaptations of real folk stories which helped to ground the book firmly in 1800s Scotland.

The Story Keeper by Anna Mazzola was an enjoyable historical fiction mystery and will appeal to fans of books like The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry and The Good People by Hannah Kent.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Carpe Librum!

Review: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab

I enjoyed The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab so much that it made My Top 5 Books of 2021 so I decided to give her 2025 release Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil a try. First and foremost, this is a well written historical fiction novel with multiple female character points of view. All three characters eventually intersect in this plot spanning multiple centuries and multiple countries.

Alice is our contemporary character in 2019 and a student at a university in Boston. Feeling adrift, a one night stand changes the course of her life and sets her on a path of regret and revenge. In 1521, Maria is aged 10 years old and living with her family in a small town on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. We meet the third character Charlotte/Lottie later in the book and we pick up her backstory from 1827 in London.

This is a character driven book about these three women:

"In fairy tales, big things happen in threes. Three children. Three beds. Three roads. The third bite is poison, the third gift is great, the third door always leads home." Page 338

Now that I've set the scene and have your attention, it's time to drop a bomb... this is a sapphic vampire romance. Yep, you read that right. The paranormal romance genre rarely features in my reading schedule but I took a chance on this based on the strength of the author's writing. And I was right!

The writing in Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is beautiful. The personal challenges and internal struggles faced by all three women kept my attention and the gothic setting was sublime. As they age over decades and centuries, vampires in Schwab's world start to lose touch with the values and characteristics that made them human.

"Now and then, she wakes to find another little corner of her emptied, some aspect crumbled away in sleep. Perhaps it was a shard of insecurity. A sliver of regret. Sabine probes her mind, trying to find the nature of the absence, like a tongue searching for a missing tooth, but never does." Page 265

Schwab addresses the topic I was most interested in when reading the Anne Rice Interview with the Vampire series: what is it like to be immortal? (Don't worry, there are no sparkly vampires here). The author examines the toll it takes on all three of the characters, including the challenges they face maintaining their existence in the world without revealing their secret nature and evading the dangers that pursue them.

This statement from a male vampire to one of our characters reminded me of the relationship between Lestat and Louis:

"If you wish to stay, then you may do so as my guest, and I will be your gracious host. But you will live as I do, by a certain set of rules. There will be no skulking about in shadows, no victims stolen from the street and cast in the canal. I will show you how to savor every soul you take. How to claim space, and bend minds, how to enthrall, enchant, and masquerade. How to be the last one they think of when the bodies go missing." Pages 206-207

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is a unique genre-blending novel that defies easy categorisation and will appeal to a range of readers as a result. Straddling historical fiction, fantasy and queer romance and championing strong feminist characters, this book may appeal to you even if you don't like vampire novels. And if you believe books about vampires aren't for you, consider this:

"And here is the awful thing about belief. It is a current, like compulsion. Hard to forge when it goes against your will, but easy enough when it carries you the way you want to go." Page 401

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab is about female agency, love, power, hunger, control, rage and revenge and is highly recommended for Anne Rice fans.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review: Cape Fever by Nadia Davids

* Copy courtesy of Simon & Schuster *

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids is a gothic tale of desire and revenge set in 1920s South Africa. Soraya is hired as the live-in house maid and companion to Mrs Hattingh in a grand house in an unnamed British colony which could easily be Cape Town.

The novel begins in a seemingly familiar upstairs downstairs historical fiction style plot I've read and loved before. The list of daily, weekly, fortnightly and monthly chores Soraya is expected to carry out feed this fascination and the class distinction is clear.

Separated from her betrothed and letting Mrs Hattingh believe she can't read or write, Soraya accepts a generous offer from her employer to write a letter to him once a week on her behalf. This becomes a weekly ritual for both women that seems genuine and generous in the beginning as they sit together, read his reply and compose a response.

"It's as though she's shown me a door, told me about the riches that lie beyond it, opened it very slightly, enough for the warm gold glow behind it to spill out, just a little, with both of us knowing she can shut it whenever she likes." Page 73

Soraya comes from a Muslim community and the juxtaposition of the two cultures is ever present, with Mrs Hattingh continuing to assert her dominance and superiority at every opportunity. The writing is evocative and I particularly enjoyed her description of smells. I'm going to include the full quote here so that you can enjoy it and I can read it again and again in the future.

Soraya notices that in big houses with high ceilings and long corridors, the smells of people disappear into nothing.

"In the Quarter, smells stay. There's the smell in our houses of incense burning both now and fifty years ago, of a thousand meals past and the ones bubbling on stoves this minute. Sticking to every wall, woven into every curtain, the reek of chopped onions and pressed garlic, the trace of scattered methi, diced chilies, dried bay leaves; of spices - whole, roasted, ground, cast in hot oil - and of meat braising, bones boiling, fat spitting, broth cooking, sugar burning, rose water steaming, tea brewing, mint leaves just torn, ginger beer just poured. It's the smell of more in good times and of keeping an eye in lean ones. In our house, also, the whiff of my mother's soaps, the sweet jasmine my father planted at the front gate, the sticky heat of my and my sisters' sweat, the rush of the tides my brother brings back with him from a day at the beach and the fish he carries, still on the hook, sea fresh, glassy-eyed, salt crusted, scales shining." Pages 30-31

After reading this I desperately wanted to visit Soraya's house and inhale some of those scents, and absorb the swirl of life and history that had taken place there.

Constantly in each other's company, Soraya is unable to leave her position as her family desperately need her wages to get by, yet the relationship between the two women slowly begins to sour until it reaches an exciting and unexpected climax.

"She walks away, her slight frame straight, arms soft and graceful, once a girl who would have practiced with a book on her head, and I marvel that she can so easily show me her back when the kitchen is full of knives." Page 151

Cape Fever by Nadia Davids is a slow burn gothic psychological suspense thriller about class, colonialism, power, loneliness, love, loss, grief, secrets and betrayal and I loved it. Highly recommended.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review: The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James

Rebecca James is an Australian author and in 2011 and 2013 I enjoyed Beautiful Malice and Sweet Damage respectively. They were both YA novels set in Australia and in this offering she takes us across the seas to England.

Published in 2018, The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James is an historical fiction novel with dual timelines centred around the ominous property of Winterbourne Hall.

In 1947, Alice takes on the role of governess to twins living at Winterbourne Hall, a property situated on the cliffs of Cornwall overlooking the sea.

In present day New York, adopted art gallery curator Rachel knows nothing about her birth parents and is shocked when she learns she's the heir of Winterbourne Hall after the death of her Aunt Constance.

I love books where a building is its own character and we definitely have this in spades here. Winterbourne sits high on the clifftops and dominates the skyline of small town Polcreath, with a dark wood on the other side. One of the characters is filled with wonder when they see Winterbourne for the first time.

"It's hard to imagine a more dramatic facade. The place instantly brings to mind an imposing religious house - a Parisian cathedral, perhaps, decorated with gaping arches and delicate spires. Turrets thrust skyward, and to the east the blunt teeth of a battlement crown remind me of a game of chess. Plunging gargoyles are laced around its many necks, long and thin, jutting, as if leaping from the building's skin. Lancet windows, too many to count, adorn the exterior, and set on the western front is what appears to be a chapel." Page 15

I think it'd be awesome to see this gothic tale adapted for the big screen, even if it's just to see Winterbourne Hall. If you've been following my reviews for a while, you'll know I also love a book with twins and in this case the twins are manipulative and up to no good; perfect for a struggling governess with secrets of her own.

The romantic elements in both timelines were necessary and well-balanced, but it's fair to say they were the parts I connected with the least. Every time we were in a romance thread I found myself wishing we were back with the haunted mirror, the creepy oil painting and the duplicitous twins.

Elements of Alice's fascination with the late mistress of Winterbourne reminded me a lot of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and I wonder if Rebecca is one of the author's favourite books.

The Woman in the Mirror by Rebecca James is a dark gothic mystery about secrets, inheritance, haunting and a curse and is perfect to read at this time of year.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review: The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson by Belinda Lyons-Lee

* Copy courtesy of Transit Lounge *

The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson by Belinda Lyons-Lee is the story behind the events that inspired Robert Louis Stevenson to write The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

With a killer Prologue about wardrobes and their ability to absorb the essence of their creator as well as those who have used it to keep their belongings safely inside it, I dare you to read the first page and not continue.

When the story kicks off we're in 1885 in the seaside town of Bournemouth on the south coast of England. The novel is told from the perspective of Fanny Osbourne, a married American writer who went on to divorce her husband and marry Robert Louis Stevenson to become Fanny Stevenson.

I appreciated the character list at the beginning of the book and it certainly helped me keep the Shelley characters straight in my mind. In telling her tale to Lady Shelley, Fanny confides:

'It's a strange tale,' I said. 'A wardrobe, a hundred-year-old hanging of an infamous criminal, a cunning poisoner, and plenty of greed, lust, betrayal and madness.' Page 66

You might be wondering if you need to have read any of Robert Louis Stevenson's work (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde or Treasure Island) in order to enjoy this gothic historical fiction novel and my answer is a resounding no. I haven't read the Jekyll and Hyde classic, although those who have done so will definitely enjoy the few snippets of writing shared in this novel as Stevenson throws himself into his work creating a novel about the duality of nature.

At the same time I was reading this, I was listening to Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green and it had additional relevancy for me as Stevenson is portrayed as having a consumption like illness (now called tuberculosis) which played a large part in the events of the novel.

This is my second time reading the work of this Australian author, having enjoyed Tussaud by Belinda Lyons-Lee back in April 2021 and I was pleased to find this just as well researched and containing a similar dark gothic atmosphere I've come to appreciate in her writing.

The Haunting of Mr and Mrs Stevenson by Belinda Lyons-Lee is recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction based on the lives and actions of real people from history with a touch of the supernatural.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review: The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas

The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas is set in 1885 at the Salpêtrière Asylum in Paris. At the time, women who were homeless, practising prostitution or suffering from a mental illness or neurological disorder found themselves committed to the asylum. A woman who publicly criticised her husband's infidelity could be locked away. If a woman didn't want to marry and was discovered to prefer same sex relationships, she was locked up. A middle aged woman flaunting herself on the arm of a much younger man could be incarcerated for debauchery, while today we'd call her a cougar.

According to the author, women of loose virtue, the dotards and the violent, the hysterics and the simpletons, the fantasists and the fabulists were all admitted. Basically, the Salpêtrière took in women Paris didn't know how to deal with.

A diagnosis of hysteria was easily made and I knew I'd find it frustrating at just how easy it was to pack a woman off to an insane asylum in this period of history.

"The Salpêtrière is a dumping ground for women who disturb the peace. An asylum for those whose sensitivities do not tally with what is expected of them. A prison for women guilty of possessing an opinion." Page 27

Primarily a dual narrative, Geneviève is the Matron of the Asylum and a stern mother figure to the nurses. Eugénie is from a well to-do family and finds herself sent to the Salpêtrière Asylum after confiding in her grandmother that she can see ghosts. Geneviève has devoted her life to the Asylum looking after the inmates, but things begin to change for her when Eugénie arrives.

Inspired by history and including the work of Jean-Martin Charcot - renowned for founding modern neurology as we know it - the title was drawn from the fact that a ball was held at the Salpêtrière Asylum every year. Patients were dressed in elaborate gowns and members of high society attended the ball to observe the madwomen from a safe distance and watch them dance. In the novel, the majority of patients look forward to the ball and the opportunity to dress up, be seen by the public and maybe meet a man while the spectacle and behaviour of Paris' elite left a lot to be desired.

A relatively short novel with a satisfying conclusion, I was hoping for a greater focus on Eugénie's ability and would happily follow her into a second novel to see what becomes of her.

Published in 2019 and translated from French, The Mad Women's Ball by Victoria Mas is about agency and the suppression of female autonomy in 19th century France and in 2021 it was also made into a movie in France.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Review: Gothic by Fred Botting

Many years ago I toyed with the idea of undertaking a course in gothic literature. There wasn't anything available in Melbourne at the time so I did the next best thing and purchased one of the most popular texts that kept coming up on the reading lists of other courses, Gothic by Fred Botting. It then sat on my shelf for 7 years.

Gothic by Fred Botting is literary criticism and an academic overview of gothic novels - and movies - and changes in the gothic genre from the 1700s - 2012. While it’s only a slim book at 224 pages, the academic nature of the approach meant it was always going to be a slog reading this without the supporting structure of a course or guidance from a Professor of Literature to bring it to life.

What is gothic literature anyway I hear you ask? My 2012 blog post entitled Gothic Tales has been viewed more than 21,000 times and contains an ongoing list of gothic novels I've read, including an overview of nine elements that can make a novel gothic. Some of these include: setting in a castle; an ancient prophecy; women in distress or threatened by a powerful, impulsive, tyrannical male and more.

Here Botting includes the following description of gothic elements from an essay published in 1797:

"... dark subterranean vaults, decaying abbeys, gloomy forests, jagged mountains and wild scenery inhabited by bandits, persecuted heroines, orphans and malevolent aristocrats." Page 41

In the gothic genre, authors set out to create an atmosphere of gloom and mystery populated by shocks, supernatural incidents, superstitious beliefs and threatening figures to create wonder and fear in the reader.

It was interesting to read that some cyberpunk and steampunk novels can also be classified as gothic novels and I'd never have guessed that the character of Ripley in Alien is a science fiction gothic heroine. Graveyard poetry was discussed and I think I'd like to read a book on gothic architecture and gothic revival architecture at some point because those styles send shivers down my spine for some reason.

Botting takes the reader through the gothic genre chronologically and while I hadn't read any of the offerings in the early pages, familiar titles certainly started to pop up so I made the lists below. Towards the end of the book the author begins to mention films that I wouldn't have thought were gothic in nature at all so I added those too.

Books referenced that I've read
Carter, Angela (The Bloody Chamber)
Conrad, Joseph (Heart of Darkness)
Dickens, Charles (Great Expectations, Oliver Twist)
Du Maurier, Daphne (Rebecca)
Eco, Umberto (The Name of the Rose)
Hawthorne, Nathaniel (The Scarlet Letter)
Meyer, Stephanie (Twilight)
Rice, Anne (Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat)
Shelley, Mary (Frankenstein)
Stoker, Bram (Dracula)
Wells, H.G. (The War of the Worlds)
Wilde, Oscar (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Book referenced on my TBR
Morrison, Toni (Beloved)

Authors I've read but different books were referenced
Ackroyd, Peter
Austen, Jane
Harris, Charlaine
Jackson, Shirley
James, Henry
King, Stephen
Melville, Herman
Twain, Mark
Woolf, Virginia

Movies referenced I've watched
Alien
Blade
Blade Runner
Lost Boys
Poltergeist
Psycho
Terminator and Terminator 2
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
The Amityville Horror
The Name of the Rose
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
The Vampire Lestat
Twilight

The academic writing style is very dry and technical and without the structure of a literary course it fell flat for me. Having said that, what I found really disappointing was that it just ends. The author doesn't speculate or posit anything for the future of the gothic genre and that was a missed opportunity in my view.

Gothic - Second Edition by Fred Botting is part of The New Critical Idiom series recommended for students and non fiction readers of literary criticism.

My Rating:

★ ★ ★ ★ ★