The narrative follows recently bereaved spinster Margaret into Millbank Penitentiary, where she volunteers to visit the prisoners. There are some books that leave a lasting mark upon your heart, and this is one of them. They jazz up the concept of life after death to make it more palatable for their audience, however, the real fiends haunting Alison are obscene and bleakly horrific. It tells the tale of spirit medium Alison and her toxic relationship with her manager, Collette, who inhabit a drab, threadbare life very like a ghost land in itself. She breathed new life into the bones of Thomas Cromwell and the Wolf Hall Trilogy was full of gothic touches, but this earlier work is on another level. No one writes about the dead better than Mantel. An excellent selection of source material and astute commentary not only evoke the period but help the reader to engage with it. In a scholarly yet accessible work, Owen explores the role played by women as mediums, healers and believers during the late 19th century, detailing how the spiritualist movement subverted gender norms. The Darkened Room: Women, Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England by Alex Owen The following books helped me to bring her to life on the page – if you will excuse the pun.ġ. My thoughts about these contradictions found expression in my character Pearl, a shy young girl held at the mercy of her “gift”. She spoke with a voice of authority, but that voice was not her own. Nineteenth-century medium Elizabeth d’Esperance wrote in her memoir Shadow Land, “I feel very much like reminding that she ought to be obliged to me, and take some notice of me sitting there, instead of sweeping past in so unceremonious a fashion.”ĭ’Esperance’s quote illustrates the paradox at the heart of the spirit medium’s life: while she apparently possessed a power, she needed to become passive to exercise it. Rather than being wanted, she was a mere gateway that even the spirits suffered as an inconvenience. Although the medium could be a “star” such as Florence Cook in the 1870s, her real purpose was to disappear from the room altogether. For me, the fascination lay in exploring a character poised between two worlds, belonging to neither.

God Save the King by Laura Purcell