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brigdhNetGalley is a website where you can sign up (for free!) and find an abundance of electronic ARCs offered by publishers in the hopes of garnering reviews/word of mouth/library buys/etc. I highly recommend it if you read ebooks! (And since books are heavy and luggage restrictions are tight, I am reading a lot of ebooks right now. Feel free to let me know about other sources, if you have recommendations).
Wildthorn, by Jane Eagland, is the YA story of seventeen-year-old Louisa Cosgrove, who lives in Victorian England and yet wants to be a doctor. The book opens with her arriving at an insane asylum, where she is told that her name is not what she believes it to be but is instead Lucy Childs and that she is very sick. Louisa attempts to prove that she is sane, to escape, and to figure out why this has happened and who is responsible.
So, yeah, it's basically Sarah Waters's Fingersmith with lower-quality writing. It's not always fair to compare one book to another, but seriously, how many books can there be with 1) Victorian teenage lesbians*, 2) imprisonment in a madhouse centering around a fake name, 3) escape therefrom, and 4) the revelation that it has to do with family secrets?
Wildthorn's romance is much less passionate and appealing than that in Fingersmith, perhaps because there is little character development given to either of the women involved. It comes off as "You like girls? So do I! WE SHOULD BE TOGETHER FOREVER." Actually, there's little character development given to anyone in this book. Louisa constantly comes off as a near-saint, while the villains are ludicrously over-the-top. No one has any particular depth or uniqueness. Additionally, Louisa feels much too modern to be a believable Victorian woman; she often reacts as though she had never been exposed to her own culture before. I suppose some people might find her more sympathetic this way, but I found it annoying. Like, no duh, your mom doesn't want you to be a doctor: you live in VICTORIAN ENGLAND. Why are you surprised that this is a difficult career choice? I suspect the author did some research on women in Victorian madhouses and wanted to convey this information to her audience more than she wanted to tell a story. Wildthorn reads like the worst kind of Problem Novel, with a narrative that constantly harps on how hard feminist women had it in The Olde Days and the Terrors of Past Medical Care, right down to including quotes from various historical medical texts. Such a focus on showing off her research at the expense of the story does not make for a good novel.
Overall, disappointing, but still worth reading if you have a particular interest in the topic.
*If you know of other books with Victorian teenage lesbians, OMG TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME
Wildthorn, by Jane Eagland, is the YA story of seventeen-year-old Louisa Cosgrove, who lives in Victorian England and yet wants to be a doctor. The book opens with her arriving at an insane asylum, where she is told that her name is not what she believes it to be but is instead Lucy Childs and that she is very sick. Louisa attempts to prove that she is sane, to escape, and to figure out why this has happened and who is responsible.
So, yeah, it's basically Sarah Waters's Fingersmith with lower-quality writing. It's not always fair to compare one book to another, but seriously, how many books can there be with 1) Victorian teenage lesbians*, 2) imprisonment in a madhouse centering around a fake name, 3) escape therefrom, and 4) the revelation that it has to do with family secrets?
Wildthorn's romance is much less passionate and appealing than that in Fingersmith, perhaps because there is little character development given to either of the women involved. It comes off as "You like girls? So do I! WE SHOULD BE TOGETHER FOREVER." Actually, there's little character development given to anyone in this book. Louisa constantly comes off as a near-saint, while the villains are ludicrously over-the-top. No one has any particular depth or uniqueness. Additionally, Louisa feels much too modern to be a believable Victorian woman; she often reacts as though she had never been exposed to her own culture before. I suppose some people might find her more sympathetic this way, but I found it annoying. Like, no duh, your mom doesn't want you to be a doctor: you live in VICTORIAN ENGLAND. Why are you surprised that this is a difficult career choice? I suspect the author did some research on women in Victorian madhouses and wanted to convey this information to her audience more than she wanted to tell a story. Wildthorn reads like the worst kind of Problem Novel, with a narrative that constantly harps on how hard feminist women had it in The Olde Days and the Terrors of Past Medical Care, right down to including quotes from various historical medical texts. Such a focus on showing off her research at the expense of the story does not make for a good novel.
Overall, disappointing, but still worth reading if you have a particular interest in the topic.
*If you know of other books with Victorian teenage lesbians, OMG TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME
