... terrific ... [Summerscale] has achieved the perfect balance between her central story and its cultural context ... Most deft of all is Summerscale’s reading of the Fodor-Fielding relationship, not as some folie à deux but as a piece of collaborative sense-making.
... delightful ... As amateur detectives go, Fodor can be humorless, but he’s redeemed by his earnestness ... It’s easy to understand what Fodor hoped to gain from proving that poltergeist activity was triggered by trauma. But what about Alma? What was in all this for her, aside from some cheap jewelry? Well, this is where the Jungians take over from the Freudians. Always prescient about the social status of the women she studies, Summerscale notes that Alma was the very model of a colorless, faceless, powerless housewife. But a housewife with psychic powers could escape those social constraints.
... isn't just the narrative of Fodor's investigation of Fielding — it's also a narrative about women and power, about anxiety of the unknown and the fear of looming war, about the choices people make (consciously or unconsciously) in order to escape certain aspects of their lives ... Summerscale's writing is so inviting, the historical details folded into the narrative so well, that The Haunting of Alma Fielding reads like a novel you don't want to put down. (The book design is also superb, the typeface somehow evoking something old and mysterious while also being easy on the eyes.) Best of all, it offers a variety of possibilities without definitively landing on one single answer; the book recognizes that, sometimes, the answer to the question 'Was it real or was it fake?' is simply 'Yes.'
... a detective novel, a ghost yarn and a historical record rolled into one. Blending fact and fiction, it is an electrifying reconstruction of the reported events surrounding the Fieldings, all the while placing them in a wider context ... Summerscale resists the temptation to mine the more comic aspects of the story – her book is about more than flying teacups. She weaves in analysis on class, female emancipation and sexuality, and the collective angst of a nation ... You feel his pain, along with Alma’s, as the true story is revealed.
... 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.
Kate Summerscale’s book plunges readers into this febrile atmosphere of uncertainty that deepened as a new world war clouded the horizon ... Summerscale has a communicative fascination for moments of societal flux ... An obvious corollary to Fielding’s own sense of persecution would be Fodor’s Jewishness at a time when anti-Semitism in Britain was rife. Summerscale sets the scene of Oswald Mosley’s infamous Blackshirts but does not dig very deeply into Fodor’s own sidelining by his employers at the International Institute for Psychical Research, or the relationship he had with his blueblooded colleagues. It is a surprising oversight from such a consummate researcher as Summerscale, and it diminishes the resonance of an otherwise admirable book.
Likely to appeal to readers of ghost stories and psychology alike, this well-researched chronicle pulls directly from firsthand accounts, interviews, news articles, séances, photographs, and other sources to provide as comprehensive a view as possible from this side of history.
Summerscale vividly recreates the four months in 1938 that fascinated a Britain seeking distraction from Hitler’s ominous aggressions, and reconstructs the events and the secret inner torment that led to Alma’s brief appearance in the spotlight with sensitivity and a novelist’s gift for narrative. Readers will be riveted.
The narrative is an intimate portrayal of two people locked in a complicated relationship, and while some readers may tire of Summerscale’s painstaking documentation of Alma’s paranormal activities, her sense of humor and clear style keep the pages moving. Despite a lack of definitive answers, plenty of interesting questions linger at the end of this fascinating book ... An astute psychological study enlivened by dry wit, eccentric characters, and informed analyses of 1930s England.
