RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewThough Mary Toft; Or, The Rabbit Queen offers much that speaks to our own slippery times, it’s neither philosophy posing as a story nor a patronizing sneer at those gullible folk of yesteryear. Rather, taking literary license with the title character’s documented history, Palmer spins a cracking tale that, despite its disconcerting subject, is piquantly cheerful and compassionate ... Palmer never resorts to pantomime — except, perhaps, for Nathanael St. André, the first surgeon to hotfoot it to Godalming. With his artful conversation, voluminous wig, silken high heels and mini-me apprentice, he’s straight out of a Hogarth cartoon. Otherwise, with empathy and imagination, Palmer explores the master/apprentice relationship, first love and first rivalry, spite and kindness: conjuring a world to raise a wry smile, some brow furrowing and the occasional loud — very loud — gasp ... But what of Mary Toft herself? She is Palmer’s bravest interpretation...to me Palmer is paying Mary the compliment of complexity, raising her above her usual role as a vehicle for ridiculing the 18th-century medical profession. She is a woman whose story, both happily and unhappily, is rather more than the sum of its rabbit parts.
Chris Womersley
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewBy interweaving the trivial, the humorous and the grisliest of the grisly, Chris Womersley straps us in for a shivery ride ... It’s a colorful cast, some of them fictional, some of them real, and when you include the child-trafficking into which Nicolas has been pitched, a side story involving the king’s mistress and, naturally, an old map leading to buried treasure, there’s enough plot for several novels. This abundance supplies admirable energy. It does, however, reduce the narrative’s scope for subtlety and this is a problem ... description alone, however detailed and unsparing, isn’t enough to grip, but the author’s enthusiasm fuels the slow-burning horror of his tale ... Sometimes in a Gothic novel authors lose courage and prettify the end. No danger of that here. Unafraid to go where the novel has taken him, Womersley produces a finale that’s both slippery and perfectly in keeping. And beware. Just when you think it’s all over, the author’s note turns out to be as Gothic as the novel itself.
