The Whispering Muse: The most spellbinding gothic novel of the year, packed with passion and suspense

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Mrs Dyer wants to prepare Jenny for theatre life and Shakespeare productions in particular. She pays for her to see Dr. Faustus at a local theatre. The actor playing Faustus is well renowned for being the best. But the performance becomes marred with tragedy when the actor dies on stage in a grisly and gory fashion. A small timepiece seems to be connected and Jenny feels distraught at what she’s witnessed. This was a fun, gothic read set in a Victorian theatre. I loved all the atmosphere and references to classic tragedies during this novel and the scene setting was vivid and colourful. Jenny Wilcox is a character you immediately feel sympathy towards, she is desperate, selfless and therefore easily manipulated. Her life has clearly not been easy, abandoned by her father and left in debt by her brother, Jenny must provide for her younger siblings, one of whom has a disability. With very little choices in life for an unmarried woman, she makes do with whatever coin she can earn. It’s easy to see why she agrees to Mrs Dyer's offer, even when her requests become increasingly immoral. Lilith, though more complexly flawed, brazen and more ambitious than Jenny, also comes across as desperate. The way Lilith clings to the idea of Melpomene and her promise of all her desires coming true, shows us that she is desperate too but not just for wealth. Lilith is lonely and is seeking love and adoration by any means necessary.

The Whispering Muse – Laura Purcell The Whispering Muse – Laura Purcell

I did not really warm to the characters - some of them are supposed to be vile - but even Jenny the protagonist felt a little one-dimensional and I couldn't really get on board with how she was used as a pawn throughout the novel. Fun, fun, fun! I was enthralled by the world of The Whispering Muse as soon as I started it. A fading Victorian theatre, a reputedly cursed actress, a suspicious (and highly melodramatic) wife: could there be a better setup for a spooky historical mystery? Purcell doesn’t put a foot wrong here, and it’s always easy to understand why narrator Jenny can’t extricate herself from this tangled web of obsession and betrayal. A thoroughly enjoyable gothic confection, filled with great characters and vivid scenes. Jenny is struggling to get to get by and keep her family together after being disgraced from her last job and her older brother abandoning her to look after the rest of the family on her own. Her brother Greg stole the money meant for her brother’s operation and a woman’s ring and then fled to America. Let Purcell enter us into the dark world of the theatre, where the price of success and fame may be too high to pay. Our main protagonist is Jenny Wilcox, who after being fired from her previous place of employment is hired by Mrs Dyer, wife to the owner of The Mercury theatre in London’s West End, to dress their leading lady Lilith, who’ll play Lady Macbeth in their first ever production of Macbeth. It seems like a dream job, one which will pay a life changing sum of money and finally lift Jenny and her siblings out of poverty. Though, as with anything which seems too good to be true, there is a catch. Mrs Dyer also hires Jenny to spy on Lilith as she suspects she holds some scandalous secrets involving her husband. It isn’t long before Jenny becomes embroiled in an escalating plot of revenge orchestrated by her employer and also must manage Lilith’s ravings of the deal she has made with Melpomene, the tragic Greek Muse. Jenny doesn’t believe in curses, ghosts nor Greek muses, but as dreadful events surrounding the theatre begin to unfold, her reasoning wavers. What once felt like a dream soon transforms into a nightmare. The threat and presence of Melpomene – well I didn’t know much about this but I did wait until after the novel to research it and wow, so much to learn and investigate. I feel Laura must have had some fun researching all of this.Laura Purcell, a skilful purveyor of gothic tales, has created another darkly twisting narrative in The Whispering Muse' Sunday Times Purcell’s prose is wonderfully precise, from the onset there is an easily immersive flow to Jenny’s first person narration, compelling us to learn more about her life and of those she meets along the way. However as the novel progresses the prose fittingly becomes lyrical, atmospheric and razor sharp when the more unsettling scenes play out. Contemporary Gothic is my favourite genre and nobody does that better then Laura Purcell. I’m a massive fan of her previous novels – especially The Silent Companions (2017) and The Shape of Darkness (2021) – and now I can add The Whispering Muse to the list.

The Whispering Muse | Laura Purcell | 9781526627186 | NetGalley The Whispering Muse | Laura Purcell | 9781526627186 | NetGalley

Fortunately, Caeneus comes to the rescue whenever the book threatens to degenerate into a drily whimsical exercise. His tales dredge up primal passions of lust, jealousy and revenge. His argonaut adventures mingle Greek and Scandinavian myths, showing the common wellsprings of these violent, troubling narratives. Christianity and the horrors of the second world war are fed into the mix, too, as the book tries – with an elusive logic typical of Sjón – to unify its disparate themes. Caeneus speaks of his "restorative" crucifixion at the hands of Jason, and also revisits his adolescence, when he was incarnated as a nubile female called Caenis. The description of Caenis's rape by Poseidon (which Haraldsson tut-tuts as "a little on the racy side") is grotesquely evocative: "I tried to scream for help but he forced my teeth apart with his blue fingers and spat a mouthful of raw wet seaweed inside … the shark oil oozing from his hair into my eyes." Paull, Emily (7 February 2021). "Book Review: The Shape of Darkness reinforces Laura Purcell as a master of building suspense". The AU Review . Retrieved 11 May 2023. Hardyment, Christina. "Review: The Corset by Laura Purcell". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460 . Retrieved 11 May 2023.This is a brilliantly paced gothic horror story, its setting within the London Victorian era so fitting and atmospheric. Laura Purcell has a talent for writing within this genre and era and delivers in a way that many promise yet don’t quite achieve. The sense of dread that filled me as I progressed through the story was met time and again with flinching purpose. I was fascinated, horrified, gripped, and reeled in, held spellbound right up until the unexpected ending. In desperate need of employment, Jenny takes up a job as a dresser at the Mercury Theatre. However, the post comes with strings attached, in that she must spy on the lead actress, Lilith. The latter is a true artiste, with a demanding nature, and a secret that threatens Jenny's employer. As events unfold, this becomes a story of superstition and revenge, with a range of startling deaths to match. However, something far worse than Lilith’s tantrums and Mrs Dyer’s dangerous jealousies lurks in the theatre, whispering in the shadows. A dark force is draining the life out of the theatre and the leading lady. What is the mystery of the silver watch? And what is the price of greatness on the stage?