In the shadows of Victorian London, a tale of obsession and redemption unfolds.
Margaret Prior, an upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, has begun visiting the womenâs ward of Millbank prison, Victorian Londonâs grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst Millbankâs murderers and common thieves, Margaret finds herself increasingly fascinated by on apparently innocent inmate, the enigmatic spiritualist Selina Dawes.
Selina was imprisoned after a sÊance she was conducting went horribly awry, leaving an elderly matron dead and a young woman deeply disturbed. Although initially skeptical of Selinaâs gifts, Margaret is soon drawn into a twilight world of ghosts and shadows, unruly spirits and unseemly passions, until she is at last driven to concoct a desperate plot to secure Selinaâs freedom, and her own.
As in her noteworthy deput, Tipping the Velvet, Sarah Waters brilliantly evokes the sights and smells of a moody and beguiling nineteenth-century London, and proves herself yet again a storyteller, in the words of the New York Times Book Review, of "startling power."
In the shadows of Victorian London, a tale of obsession and redemption unfolds.
Margaret Prior, an upper-class woman recovering from a suicide attempt, has begun visiting the womenâs ward of Millbank prison, Victorian Londonâs grimmest jail, as part of her rehabilitative charity work. Amongst M...