PositiveSunday Times (UK)There have been other books about Caroline Norton, but Fraser’s is the first to emphasise what a modern figure she is, portraying her not as a hapless victim but as a working mother and bestselling writer who refused to submit to what can only be called the patriarchy — a \'difficult\' woman whose bloodymindedness improved the lot of other women. Fraser is surely right to call her a 19th-century heroine.
Laura Thompson
RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)... excellent ... The heiresses in Thompson’s book do not disappoint. It is packed with rich women who can buy everything but love ... Again and again the reader feels like shouting, \'What on earth were you thinking?\' as heiress after heiress wilfully marries Mr Wrong ... wonderfully entertaining.
Fiona Sampson
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)The award-winning poet Fiona Sampson does her best to rectify this imbalance in her intriguing biography of and meditation on EBB, making the convincing claim that she was the first female lyric poet ... Sampson asserts, and, like Dickens, she wrote not for an elite circle of friends, but a mass audience ... Sampson’s book is timely in its examination of EBB’s political awakening ... Sampson’s book is irritatingly opaque in places, but as a poet she puts the work before the life, and that surely is the right way round.
Kate Summerscale
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)... one of the many great pleasures of The Haunting of Alma Fielding, as in all of [Summerscale\'s] work, is her knack of recreating the feverish atmosphere of the time ... Fodor isn’t the only one straining to believe in the impossible. Reading this book, I was reminded of the willingness of the police to believe in the lurid tales of parliamentary paedophiles, or of the followers of QAnon — deception is a two-way street. Fielding was a product of her time; her haunting occurred in the year that Magritte was first exhibited in London — his surrealist work sees everyday objects in situations in which we never encounter them, an idea that seems tailor-made for a talking mongoose, or a soap dish chasing Fielding down the stairs.
Paulina Bren
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)... [an[ entertaining history ... Bren’s book is a fascinating look at a piece of hidden female history. The fortunes of the hotel are entwined with the changing role of women in the 20th century. It’s timely too: 100 years after it was built, in the wake of #MeToo and the death of Sarah Everard, the idea of a women-only hotel feels not anachronistic but liberating.
Benjamin Black
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe Secret Guests is not so much a thriller as what Graham Greene called \'an entertainment,\' and the tone is very reminiscent of the Greene of England Made Me or Our Man in Havana. Although the tone is light, the novel is a mordant observation of the palimpsest of arrogance and resentment that is the legacy of Britain’s dealings with its neighbor, one that’s still being played out today as Brexit threatens to destabilize both Ireland’s economy and the island’s fragile peace. As for the princesses, they are written with a republican zest, made all the keener by the knowledge that royalty, for all its anachronistic irrelevance, sells.
Hallie Rubenhold
RaveThe Sunday Times...vividly written, carefully researched ... All the stories in the book are steeped in tragic detail ... This book is a poignant but absorbing exploration of the reality of working women’s lives in the late 19th century—and how perilously easy it was for married women with children to find themselves reduced to seeking shelter in the dank courts and alleyways around Spitalfields, where the Ripper operated. It is a book that brings a whole new meaning to the phrase \'Victorian values.\'
Julian Fellowes
PositiveThe New York Times Book ReviewThe plot devices of Belgravia will be familiar to anyone who has a passing acquaintance with Victorian fiction: There are missing papers, duplicitous ladies’ maids, gambling debts, dubious marriage lines and long-lost heirs. The novel’s chapters originally appeared online as individual 'episodes,' each ending with a cliffhanger. It’s a device that is, of course, a mainstay of the television serial drama, but in the 19th century it was used by novelists whose works were printed chapter by chapter in magazines like Dickens’s Household Words, a device intended to keep readers coming back for more. Belgravia is an unashamed homage to the Victorian serial novel ... Reading Belgravia is rather like visiting a modern re-creation of a Victorian house — every cornice molding is perfect — but it’s a Victorian house with 21st-century plumbing and Wi-Fi. It’s for anyone who has tried to read a 19th-century novel and become bored ... As you would expect, the dialogue is crisp. And there are a number of wonderful set pieces ... But without the talents of great actors to turn stereotypes into human beings, much of the characterization — particularly among the downstairs cast — seems underdeveloped, and there’s no score to remind us when a certain bit should bring tears to our eyes.
