“I’d been to Wilton’s hall before. I would have been seven or eight at the time, and somehow Aunt Cissy persuaded Mama to allow me a trip to the pantomime. Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves it was, and as rushed off to climb in a cab, Mama called after us down the front steps, ‘You watch that child…there’ll be forty thieves in the audience!’ Well I suppose she was right, because something was stolen – and that was my heart.”
And so begins the journey of discovery for the seventeen-year old Phoebe Turner, a girl living with her strict Mother, Maud, in Victorian London. Idolising her glamorous Aunt Cissy, a former opera singer, she often speculates why she had quit at the height of her powers.
“Some nights I still dream of her as Galatea, her face streamed with liquid ribbons of light.”
At just over three-hundred and fifty pages, the novel is broken down into fifty-two succinct chapters, which allows for the story to flow towards the defining moments. Such as chapter thirty, and how it reverberates throughout the remaining section.
The preceding chapters focus on the financial struggles endured by Phoebe and her Mother, when they become the victims of a robbery. It puts Maud under extreme pressure to garner financial security for her family. Exploiting their situation, the mysteriously debonair Nathaniel Samuels makes Maud an offer she cannot refuse, and much to Phoebe’s reluctance, she soon finds herself whisked away to the Hertfordshire countryside. Taking up residence in Dinwood Court, Phoebe learns she is to be a companion for Mrs Lydia Samuels, Nathaniel’s aloof wife. Her new home, based on the real Hampton Court, is superbly depicted, both in the grandeur of its setting, and the loneliness its giants walls create.
“The garden’s black puddles were splintered with silver, reflecting the rays of a rising sun. It seemed that something had broken – both out there, and inside the house.”
The mood of the house, is lifted somewhat by the fleeting visit of Nathaniel and Lydia’s son, Joseph, and his new bride Caroline. Having met in India, and honeymooned in Paris, they restore the vitality of Dinwood Court, while also instigating the tensions which unravel every subsequent layer of the story’s plot. Joseph in particular, is an extremely well written character, whose very nuances and discourse give meaning to the fascinating background of animosity between his parents. Mrs Samuels, under the watchful eye of Phoebe is very much a woman at breaking point, both emotional and physically. But it is only through the subtext of her son’s interactions that we finally begin to understand why.
“I turned to see Mrs Samuels, and even beneath her parasol’s shade, her blue eyes were shining, unnaturally bright as she fixed her son with a steady gaze.”
A constant shadow and source of comfort for Mrs Samuels, is her devoted butler, Mr Stephens, who is despised by her son. Although certainly not by the reader. His quiet reflective demeanour serves the conflict well, and in many ways one could make the argument he is the real eyes of the house. So captivating are his gestures and glances, that the novel could easily have been written from his perspective.
“His words were like balm to my ears, soothing the tense atmosphere.”
Yet by choosing Phoebe Turner as her protagonist, the author has given the reader an insight into this world through wondrous eyes. As the events unfold, and Phoebe’s life transforms, the reader experiences what dark secrets can do to the rectitude of a Victorian teenager.
“I felt myself spinning through spirals of time.”
Through some exquisite prose in The Somnambulist, the author transports the reader to a Victorian age that they will invariably yearn to be part of. To the extent that this reader had to double-check the publication date twice, in the belief that this was a reissue of classic literature. At times it was hard to comprehend one was reading a modern novel, let alone a debut, when the Victorian life it portrays is this vivid. A reader is absorbed by the narrative until it blurs with the reality they live in, making them question the technological advances of today, in light of how the family network has suffered since.
As a testament to the quality of the fiction, The Somnambulist has already been nominated for a number of awards, on account of the ubiquitous belief that this book will endure.
Furthermore, for such a sumptuously elegant novel to be wrapped in a stunningly designed book jacket makes the print edition even more desirable.
Essie Fox is an outstanding talent, and her debut novel The Somnambulist is one of the best books in the genre.