The novel starts in a fog-hit London 1860 and follows orphans Parsefall and Lizzie Rose. They've been taken in by the evil Grisini the puppet-master to help him with his puppet act. Gaspare Grisini is wonderfully painted as the evil, sinister, shifty old man à la Fagin. Theirs is a life of poverty and they are summoned to do a birthday performance for Clara, a 12-year-old child who lost all 4 of her brothers and sisters to cholera. At the performance there is a brilliantly-written scene of the skeleton act that really brings it to life, and Clara really enjoyed it too.
Clara then gets kidnapped and Grisini becomes the main suspect. But when his 2-room rented space is searched there is no sign of the kidnapped girl. That's because she has been magic-ed into an inventive hiding place, with Grisini only planning to return her once he has received his healthy ransom fee.
However things don't go to plan and things take a twist as the cast are uprooted to the home of a witch in Windermere, in the north of England. There lots of things happen, with magic playing a factor.
To me the first half of the book was better than the second. There the grubbiness Victorian London and the contrast between the well-off and the downtrodden came across really well, and the story was more purposeful. When the book went to Windermere loads of ideas were thrown in, some of them good, and others maybe not so good - how did Clara break her magic exactly, and how would it normally have been broken?
Anyway, it is still a well-written book surely inspired by Oliver Twist, and is worth a read. And if you liked it then another clever book with a lot of ideas thrown into it that you could try is A Face Like Glass by Frances Hardinge.
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| The US version is called "Splendors and Glooms" |
(I got this book through Amazon Vne to review. It is listed here.)
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