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Purcell excels at creating a spooky Gothic ambience…A dark and unsettling novel for lovers of Rebeccaand Jane Eyre.”— Kirkus A gothic tale set in a rambling house by the sea in which a maid cares for a mute old woman with a mysterious past, alongside her superstitious staff–from the author of The Silent Companions. This is a Victorian gothic tale that is complex and dark. It explores fairy legends and folk tales of Cornwall in a lot of detail and we also learn some historical facts about how consumption (Tuberculosis) was treated in those times. Purcell paints a colorful portrait of her tale’s distant time and place and immerses the reader in an era when superstition was a tenacious thread in the social fabric that bound its people. Her tale of secret guilt and atoning for it through ancient customs will please fans of classic gothic melodrama.”— Publisher’s Weekly Could not tell him that to my eyes, this was when she was truly beautiful; at the moment of fragility, when she required only me.
In Purcell’s third creepily atmospheric historical novel, a young woman flees London under a dark cloud only to discover new threats in superstition-haunted early Victorian Cornwall. A very interesting thing about this book is that it has three different timelines. The first is with Hester at Morvoren House. The second is of an earlier time in Hester’s life, when she was known as Esther Stevens. Here, we learn why, and what exactly she’s running away from. The third is from the youth of Louise Pinecroft, when she came to Morvoren House with her father, after the rest of her family had passed away due to consumption. The unsettling ambience of the book keeps you on the edge of your seat, as it’s quite chilling. You’re never too sure of some of the characters’ intentions, and whether the fairy legends and folktales are true after all.The third part of the novel takes us forty years into the past where Miss Pinecroft is a young woman working together with her father on an experimental treatment for consumption. Dr Pinecroft lost his entire family, apart from Miss Pinecroft, to consumption, and his grief has left him with a burning obsession to find a cure for this pernicious disease. A burning desire that perhaps clouds his medical mind and reasoning. He is certain that the answer to curing consumption lies in the sea air. To aid him with his work he has been assigned a group of convicts who have contracted consumption and are all trapped within its grasp, bereft of a cure that is yet to be found. These convicts are confined to the caves that adorn the cliffside beneath Morvoren House. And it is within these caves that the treatment takes place. Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken, but Dr Pinecroft is working on a ground breaking experiment, convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home. As with “The Silent Companions”, Purcell again creates a claustrophobic, eerie, dark, gothic atmosphere around Morvoren House. And again, just like the companions, the fairies feel like a malignant presence, always watching. At times I almost felt I was trapped alongside Hester in the cold, dank china room. With this book Purcell has proven that she is, or is well on her way to becoming, a master of this genre.
Bone China did not let me down. There was my much loved Cornwall which can indeed be a spooky place up on the moors and on the bleaker parts of the coast line. There was all the history of the time - the folklore, the strange to us medical practices, the china clay industry in earlier days. Hester Why arrived in Cornwall with a hope for a fresh beginning as the new live-in nurse. Running from her troubled past, little did she know Morvoren House held its own secret, festering into the household in the last 40 years. As she tried to help them with the truth, she must toe it delicately or risked shattering everything she believed in. This book is told in two alternating story-lines. One where Louise Pinecroft's family has died from consumption. Leaving her and her Physician father alone and grieving. In his grief Dr. Pinecraft believes that he knows a cure - he is going to conduct an experiment using prisoners who have consumption and show how the sea air can cure them. He is housing the prisoners in the caves underneath their new home. While he treats his patients, his daughter is becoming more uneasy as her maid talks of fairies and how they hunt the land.
Customer reviews
Hester Why has changed her name and moved to Cornwall to look after the ailing Ms Pinecroft. Ms Pinecroft barely speaks or moves, spending her days in a freezing cold room filled with china. When I see a book by Laura Purcell now I snap it up instantly. I also know what to expect - something Victorian, gothic, slightly creepy, containing lots of accurate historical fact, well written and very enjoyable. Suspenseful… This smart and sophisticated historical thriller will appeal to fans of Sarah Waters’s Fingersmithand Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.” —Publishers Weekly Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft’s family, leaving her and her father alone and heartbroken. But Dr. Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment: convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed, he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the disease in the caves beneath his new Cornish home. While he devotes himself to his controversial medical trials, Louise finds herself increasingly discomfited by the strange tales her new maid tells of the fairies that hunt the land, searching for those they can steal away to their realm. The last quarter of the book was very slow and lead up to a not so climax ending. A more, what? If that was what author Purcell was going for she achieved it with me.
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