The author of gothic V ictoriana shines a light into the darkness to reveal the creative choices she made at the beginning of her fifth novel The Fascination
The Fascination is my fifth novel in the Victorian gothic genre. Previous novels have seen stories set in the East End music halls, and haunted country houses, in London brothels, Indian temples – and in the studios creating the early moving films. It’s a time in history that’s filled with art and innovation, and new discoveries in science. It’s always fascinated me, ever since my teenage years when I read Wuthering Heights and Thomas Hardy’s tragic novels. Later, at university, the Victorian module was a favourite. It wasn’t just the human stories, though of course they are what bring these classic novels into life. It was the whole experience in which the vivid place descriptions loomed as real inside my mind, making me feel almost as if I’d travelled back in time to ‘see’ the stories playing out before my very eyes.
This rich and sensory experience is what I hope to emulate when I’m writing my own books. And now, in The Fascination, I’ve reimagined the worlds of the seedy rural fairgrounds, the glamour of the London theatres, or an anatomy museum based on one that did exist in London’s Oxford Street (before it was closed down on grounds of obscenity).
At the novel’s core is the sense of belonging among a ‘family’ of friends who have experienced rejection or abuse due to the fact that they are physically different from what society perceives as being acceptable. But in gaining such acceptance my characters must also face the dangerous intentions of those people obsessed with what was coined at the time as ‘deformo mania’ – seeking pleasure or entertainment from viewing human ‘freaks’.
My book has two main narrators, and their stories interweave as the novel’s plot develops. I like to think of their words almost as waves upon a beach. Each time one ebbs in in and out, it leaves a trace of shells and pebbles to be swept back up again in the next wave that comes along. In such a way the plot progresses, but avoids repetition. Each point of view adds depth and substance to what’s revealed by the other.
One of my two narrators is Keziah Lovell, the twin sister of Tilly. The girls were born identical but something in their past caused Tilly to stop growing at the age of only five, and later leads to the young woman being viewed as a ‘freak’ when she has reached maturity. Keziah’s chapters are written in the first person, leaving me free to demonstrate her vibrant feisty character while also showing the ex
