A new author for me, this was recommended by my friend Tanith, who appreciates the weird and wonderful in literature and with its on-cover comment from Sarah Waters and comparisons to Angela Carter this was a very appropriate book choice for me.

This debut passed me by in 2013 and Rosie Garland has produced two more critically acclaimed novels since. I was very much hoping for something along the lines of Waters and Carter both of whom have produced novels I have really loved, with maybe a touch of “The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock” thrown in. I was a little concerned it may be reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern’s “The Night Circus”, a novel I did not really warm to and was disappointed by. I needn’t have worried.

Set in Victorian London it follows the narrative of two characters, Eve, whose heavy body hair has led her towards the freak show where she is billed as “The Lion Faced Girl” and Abel, a man plagued with memory problems which leaves the past a mystery to him and the ability to heal himself, which may suggest immortality. Both are outsiders unable to function normally in society because of their differences and end up as participants in Josiah Arroner’s Palace Of Curiosities. They are drawn to one another yet there is so much keeping them apart.

I did take a little while to be drawn into this novel and it was initially Abel’s account which got me the most interested. Working as a slaughter-man and living with a group of other men in a cellar, his predicament of struggling with the even recent past I found fascinating but once he and Eve, together with a few other memorable characters found their way to the exploitational Arroner I became fully involved.

The author would be good at horror writing as she is able to gradually notch up the oddness allowing things to turn very dark for a while. This was done with subtlety and was very effective. She does relieve the pressure in the last sections of the novel to bring matters to a desirable conclusion.

This is a very solid debut. It didn’t grip me as much as the very best of Sarah Waters, Angela Carter nor even Laura Carlin whose 2018 Gothic debut “The Wicked Cometh” was such a delight but I will certainly seek out this author’s other titles and feel that I have found another voice which should continue to bring me much pleasure in her subsequent novels.

The Palace Of Curiosities was published by Harper Collins in 2013.