Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Orion (2012), Edition: Mass Market Paperback, 400 pages
Description
'Some secrets are better left buried...' When seventeen-year old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women. When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel's reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London's East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire - a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths. In a gloriously gothic debut, Essie Fox weaves a spellbinding tale of guilt and deception, regret and lost love. "VIVIDLY COMPELLING, DARK AND DAZZLING" Katherine Webb, author of The Legacy… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member BeyondEdenRock
I am so pleased that The Sonambulist caught my eye. It is a lovely piece of Victoriana, and a quite wonderful debut novel.
I fell in love with the heroine. Phoebe Turner was just seventeen years old, and she was warm bright and thoughtful. In some ways she was very mature for her years, but in
Phoebe grew up, in the East End of London, with her mother and her aunt. Maud, her mother, was a member of The Hallelujah Army, set upon promoting that society’s ideals and protecting her daughter from the many evils of the world. Those evils included the music hall where her sister, Phoebe’s Aunt Cissy sang …
Essie Fox paints Phoebe’s world wonderfully. There is a wealth of detail that brings the streets, the homes, and most of all the music hall, to life. She clearly has so much knowledge and love, but she wears it lightly and it brings the story to life quite wonderfully.
And it was clear that there was a story to be told, and secrets to be uncovered.
Phoebe loved her aunt and her aunt’s theatrical friends, and she was devastated when Cissy, suddenly, died. Maude was devastated too, at having to cope without the income that Cissy earned for the household, and she struggled. Maybe that was why she accepted an offer from Mr Samuels, a wealthy friend of Cissy’s who she had always treated with disdain, for Phoebe to become the companion of his invalid wife …
And so the story opened up. There were more wonderful pictures of another, very different, aspect of Victorian England. And there were more vivid, complex characters to meet. Phoebe knew that she would miss her home and her loved ones, but she was curious about what lay ahead. I felt just the same.
Phoebe travelled to a grand estate in Hertfordshire. Dinwood Court was a splendid gothic mansion, set in magnificent countryside, but both house and occupants were haunted by the strange death of Esther, the young daughter of the house …
At Dinwood Court I heard the echoes of other novels of Victorian England. They were lovely to hear, and I realised that Essie Fox had wonderful influences, influences that she had acknowledged and then taken to make something new of her own.
I loved watching Phoebe as she uncovered the secrets of the past, and as she learned and grew up.
The plotting was very clever and, though I worked out some of the things that would happen, others took me by surprise. In particular, the concluding chapters took the story in a direction that I hadn’t expected at all, but a direction that was completely right.
That kept the pages turning, and so did the lovely writing, the pitch perfect characters and settings, the wealth of knowledge that underpinned the story, and that very clever theme set in the title that wrapped around everything.
The Sonambulist is a wonderful debut novel, intelligent and so very readable.
I am already looking forward to whatever Essie Fox writes next.
I fell in love with the heroine. Phoebe Turner was just seventeen years old, and she was warm bright and thoughtful. In some ways she was very mature for her years, but in
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others she was very innocent, and as I learned more of her background I could understand why.Phoebe grew up, in the East End of London, with her mother and her aunt. Maud, her mother, was a member of The Hallelujah Army, set upon promoting that society’s ideals and protecting her daughter from the many evils of the world. Those evils included the music hall where her sister, Phoebe’s Aunt Cissy sang …
Essie Fox paints Phoebe’s world wonderfully. There is a wealth of detail that brings the streets, the homes, and most of all the music hall, to life. She clearly has so much knowledge and love, but she wears it lightly and it brings the story to life quite wonderfully.
And it was clear that there was a story to be told, and secrets to be uncovered.
Phoebe loved her aunt and her aunt’s theatrical friends, and she was devastated when Cissy, suddenly, died. Maude was devastated too, at having to cope without the income that Cissy earned for the household, and she struggled. Maybe that was why she accepted an offer from Mr Samuels, a wealthy friend of Cissy’s who she had always treated with disdain, for Phoebe to become the companion of his invalid wife …
And so the story opened up. There were more wonderful pictures of another, very different, aspect of Victorian England. And there were more vivid, complex characters to meet. Phoebe knew that she would miss her home and her loved ones, but she was curious about what lay ahead. I felt just the same.
Phoebe travelled to a grand estate in Hertfordshire. Dinwood Court was a splendid gothic mansion, set in magnificent countryside, but both house and occupants were haunted by the strange death of Esther, the young daughter of the house …
At Dinwood Court I heard the echoes of other novels of Victorian England. They were lovely to hear, and I realised that Essie Fox had wonderful influences, influences that she had acknowledged and then taken to make something new of her own.
I loved watching Phoebe as she uncovered the secrets of the past, and as she learned and grew up.
The plotting was very clever and, though I worked out some of the things that would happen, others took me by surprise. In particular, the concluding chapters took the story in a direction that I hadn’t expected at all, but a direction that was completely right.
That kept the pages turning, and so did the lovely writing, the pitch perfect characters and settings, the wealth of knowledge that underpinned the story, and that very clever theme set in the title that wrapped around everything.
The Sonambulist is a wonderful debut novel, intelligent and so very readable.
I am already looking forward to whatever Essie Fox writes next.
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LibraryThing member elkiedee
17 year old Phoebe lives with her mother and her aunt Cissy, a former opera singer at Covent Garden, in a big house in Bow, east London with several servants. When Cissy dies suddenly, Phoebe is devastated. Mama is struggling to make ends meet when Nathaniel Samuels, a wealthy businessman who knew
The Somnambulist is set in London and Herefordshire and is a sort of Victorian historical melodrama combined with a coming of age tale, with the theatre, a big country house, issues of inheritance and betrayal, and several disturbing secrets. Despite its size, I found the story quite compelling and flew through nearly 400 pages very easily.
Phoebe develops into a great character in the course of the story. Mama is a member of the Hallelujah Army, campaigning against the sinful theatres, whereas Phoebe has identified herself with Cissie, enjoying the occasional secret trip to the music hall. She feels pressured into accepting what happens to her at the start of the novel, but throughout, she takes every opportunity to find out what is happening, listening to conversations and chatting to the Samuels' servants. Towards the end of the story, she has become a tough, independent young woman who has learned much from her own family and from the Samuels, and can make her own choices.
The other characters in the story are also interesting and complex, as Phoebe frequently sees different facets of the people around her. I thought the portrait of Phoebe's difficult and changing relationship with her mother, as she takes on very different values and perceptions, was particularly well portrayed.
The Somnambulist is a story of places as well as people, with several different settings, including a middle class home in Bow, the theatres and music halls, the East End and the Samuels' great house, Dinwood Court, in the Herefordshire countryside. I really loved the Author's Note at the end of the book, an 11 page account of the places and other bits of the historical background to her story. Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End and Tredegar Square, Bow where Phoebe and her family live, the nearby Victoria Park and others are real places which still exist. Dinwood Court, is apparently based on Hampton Court and two other nearby stately homes. Fox also credits some online sources for her research, and admits where she has taken liberties with reality and changed things for the purposes of her story. The title of the novel is taken from a painting by Millais, showing a woman sleepwalking.
The Somnambulist is an engaging, intelligent good read which might well appeal to those who like Sarah Waters, Charles Dickens and other contemporary and historical writers who have set their fiction in Victorian London. I recommend it and will certainly read Essie Fox's future work.
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Cissy, makes an offer - of a sort of job as companion to his invalid wife in their Herefordshire mansion. Mrs Lydia Samuels has never got over the tragic death of her young daughter. Phoebe finds herself accidentally discovering a whole series of dark secrets.The Somnambulist is set in London and Herefordshire and is a sort of Victorian historical melodrama combined with a coming of age tale, with the theatre, a big country house, issues of inheritance and betrayal, and several disturbing secrets. Despite its size, I found the story quite compelling and flew through nearly 400 pages very easily.
Phoebe develops into a great character in the course of the story. Mama is a member of the Hallelujah Army, campaigning against the sinful theatres, whereas Phoebe has identified herself with Cissie, enjoying the occasional secret trip to the music hall. She feels pressured into accepting what happens to her at the start of the novel, but throughout, she takes every opportunity to find out what is happening, listening to conversations and chatting to the Samuels' servants. Towards the end of the story, she has become a tough, independent young woman who has learned much from her own family and from the Samuels, and can make her own choices.
The other characters in the story are also interesting and complex, as Phoebe frequently sees different facets of the people around her. I thought the portrait of Phoebe's difficult and changing relationship with her mother, as she takes on very different values and perceptions, was particularly well portrayed.
The Somnambulist is a story of places as well as people, with several different settings, including a middle class home in Bow, the theatres and music halls, the East End and the Samuels' great house, Dinwood Court, in the Herefordshire countryside. I really loved the Author's Note at the end of the book, an 11 page account of the places and other bits of the historical background to her story. Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End and Tredegar Square, Bow where Phoebe and her family live, the nearby Victoria Park and others are real places which still exist. Dinwood Court, is apparently based on Hampton Court and two other nearby stately homes. Fox also credits some online sources for her research, and admits where she has taken liberties with reality and changed things for the purposes of her story. The title of the novel is taken from a painting by Millais, showing a woman sleepwalking.
The Somnambulist is an engaging, intelligent good read which might well appeal to those who like Sarah Waters, Charles Dickens and other contemporary and historical writers who have set their fiction in Victorian London. I recommend it and will certainly read Essie Fox's future work.
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LibraryThing member Goldengrove
The Somnambulist (the sleepwalker) is an attempt at the 'Victorian Gothic' - a genre that plays with ghostly or unearthly elements intruding into the everyday. It's a form that was popular when what is now 'victoriana' was just ordinary, and there's a renewal of interest today, when that element
The novel is quite well set up, with a household of women divided between association with the music hall, and a devotion to the 'Hallelujah Army' (a very thinly disguised Salvation Army) The elements are there for gothic mystery - two very different sisters; a daughter that seems to have far more affinity with her aunt than her mother; a dead father. Then, when Phoebe the daughter sneaks out to the wicked music hall with her aunt Cissy who is making her comeback, both Phoebe and the reader are introduced to dangerous new people and feelings.
Sadly, the assurance of the beginning is not sustained. We could forgive the extremely obvious 'secret' of Phoebe's birth if there was something more behind it, or if Essie Fox made proper use of the device whereby the reader can see and understand more than the narrator. But Phoebe just seems rather stupid, and there is no tension at all, each 'revelation' is more of an annoyance than a surprise.
Essie Fox knows a great deal about the era, and the incidental detail is good, but the prose feels rather laboured, and she uses some very irritating anachronisms in her language that are jarring and feel lazy (I won't go into them - it makes me look like a pedant!) People who have compared her with Sarah Waters should look more carefully at the differences in ther command of language.
Overall the book is rather too long, and the plot is not taut enough - it needed to be edited more severely. I wanted to like it, but I must confess to a feeling of relief that I've finally finished it.
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has an added historical cachet. The novel is quite well set up, with a household of women divided between association with the music hall, and a devotion to the 'Hallelujah Army' (a very thinly disguised Salvation Army) The elements are there for gothic mystery - two very different sisters; a daughter that seems to have far more affinity with her aunt than her mother; a dead father. Then, when Phoebe the daughter sneaks out to the wicked music hall with her aunt Cissy who is making her comeback, both Phoebe and the reader are introduced to dangerous new people and feelings.
Sadly, the assurance of the beginning is not sustained. We could forgive the extremely obvious 'secret' of Phoebe's birth if there was something more behind it, or if Essie Fox made proper use of the device whereby the reader can see and understand more than the narrator. But Phoebe just seems rather stupid, and there is no tension at all, each 'revelation' is more of an annoyance than a surprise.
Essie Fox knows a great deal about the era, and the incidental detail is good, but the prose feels rather laboured, and she uses some very irritating anachronisms in her language that are jarring and feel lazy (I won't go into them - it makes me look like a pedant!) People who have compared her with Sarah Waters should look more carefully at the differences in ther command of language.
Overall the book is rather too long, and the plot is not taut enough - it needed to be edited more severely. I wanted to like it, but I must confess to a feeling of relief that I've finally finished it.
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LibraryThing member nicx27
This book covers the story of Phoebe Turner, a young woman who lives with her puritanical mother, and her glamorous singer aunt, Cissy. To say much more would give away key facts about the story, but it's basically about Phoebe finding out who she really is.
This is quite a classic style Victorian
I felt it got off to a slow start, but picked up again and then dipped to the point where I was quite bored by it and wanted it to end. It's a book of ups and downs for me, as I enjoyed some parts and not others. I don't think it's a particularly strong story really, and it maybe lacked something because it was all in the first person, so lost a bit of the emotion.
It wasn't a total disaster for me, hence the three stars, but certainly not a book I would rave about.
This is quite a classic style Victorian
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gothic novel, with the ubiquitous seances that seem to pop up in every Victorian story, together with music halls, a painting by a Pre-Raphaelite, and a good dose of melodrama.I felt it got off to a slow start, but picked up again and then dipped to the point where I was quite bored by it and wanted it to end. It's a book of ups and downs for me, as I enjoyed some parts and not others. I don't think it's a particularly strong story really, and it maybe lacked something because it was all in the first person, so lost a bit of the emotion.
It wasn't a total disaster for me, hence the three stars, but certainly not a book I would rave about.
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LibraryThing member lesleymc
I heard of this book via the BBC TV Bookclub, and was intrigued by the story line. Must confess to my ignorance I did not know what Somnambulist meant (sleepwalker). Now a new word added to my vocabulary. Thoroughly enjoyed this novel of 405 pages, I read it so quickly it didn't seem that long at
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all. A Gothic (although not heavily so) novel set in Victorian London and Herefordshire, mainly from the viewpoint of the primary protagonist Phoebe. Very atmospheric and descriptive, full of twists and turns some of which you can predict and some that catch you unawares. A good strong story with great characters. Show Less
LibraryThing member gogglemiss
As this was reccomended, I thought I would sample this mystery story, but I found the story too slow and contrived.
True the atmosphere was captured well for the variety music halls in the Victorian era, and the various locations around the East End of London, the characters were equally menacing
Pushed from pillar to post, I wanted to shake her.
Sorry, not for me
True the atmosphere was captured well for the variety music halls in the Victorian era, and the various locations around the East End of London, the characters were equally menacing
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and delightful, but I couldn't feel anything for poor old Phoebe at all.Pushed from pillar to post, I wanted to shake her.
Sorry, not for me
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LibraryThing member hashford
This amazing first novel is narrated by Phoebe Turner. Phoebe lives with her widowed mother, Maud and her aunt Cissy. It is an unusual household, full of contradictions. Maud is inflexible, religious in a “Temperance and Hallelujah” sort of way, and insists on wearing black at all times in
It is during one such music hall outing that Phoebe first sees the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels. She immediately notices the effect his presence has on her aunt Cissy – and here is the mystery which this novel unravels for us. What is, or was, Mr Samuel’s relationship with Cissy? And why does Maud hate him so? And what is his interest in Phoebe?
I loved this book – it’s a 5* read for me. I loved the pace, the slow unfolding of the tale. I loved all the colourful characters. I found the “voice” of Phoebe convincing and easy to empathise with, and I was fascinated by her journey from obedient daughter to independent and successful young woman.
However, what particularly stands out, for me, is the quality of the descriptive writing; here’s an example where Phoebe and her aunt Cissy are in a cemetery on a winter afternoon:
“That fog drifted through skeletal trees like ghosts, like fingers of smoke tracing names of the dead, where smog-blackened graves sprouted out of the ground: a giant’s monstrous mouldering teeth”
It’s just so atmospheric! And it is an atmospheric book – dark and brooding in places; a real Victorian gothic mystery.
But it is also more than that. To be honest, Cissy’s secret is pretty easy to guess early on in the book. The story gives us more than just the unfolding of a mystery. It also lets us see how that secret affected the lives of so many people; there’s a sort of ripple effect as one action leads to another, so that layers of cause and effect and culpability are gradually revealed for us.
As I say, it’s a 5* read for me – highly recommended. And I look forward with interest to Essie Fox’s next book!
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mourning for her missing husband; Cissy by contrast is bright and colourful, a singer and actress, who takes young Phoebe to the music hall despite Maud’s disapproval.It is during one such music hall outing that Phoebe first sees the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels. She immediately notices the effect his presence has on her aunt Cissy – and here is the mystery which this novel unravels for us. What is, or was, Mr Samuel’s relationship with Cissy? And why does Maud hate him so? And what is his interest in Phoebe?
I loved this book – it’s a 5* read for me. I loved the pace, the slow unfolding of the tale. I loved all the colourful characters. I found the “voice” of Phoebe convincing and easy to empathise with, and I was fascinated by her journey from obedient daughter to independent and successful young woman.
However, what particularly stands out, for me, is the quality of the descriptive writing; here’s an example where Phoebe and her aunt Cissy are in a cemetery on a winter afternoon:
“That fog drifted through skeletal trees like ghosts, like fingers of smoke tracing names of the dead, where smog-blackened graves sprouted out of the ground: a giant’s monstrous mouldering teeth”
It’s just so atmospheric! And it is an atmospheric book – dark and brooding in places; a real Victorian gothic mystery.
But it is also more than that. To be honest, Cissy’s secret is pretty easy to guess early on in the book. The story gives us more than just the unfolding of a mystery. It also lets us see how that secret affected the lives of so many people; there’s a sort of ripple effect as one action leads to another, so that layers of cause and effect and culpability are gradually revealed for us.
As I say, it’s a 5* read for me – highly recommended. And I look forward with interest to Essie Fox’s next book!
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LibraryThing member thejohnsmith
A steady and engaging story, although it is a bit slow at first. All about Phoebe Turner and the challenges and diificult times she faces in her late teens in Victorian England. With plenty of Gothic atmosphere and a fair sprinkling of well developed characters, both fair and foul, this is an
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enjoble read. Show Less
LibraryThing member GeraniumCat
We've seen quite a number of new books in Victorian style of late, some better than others. Common features include murder, a touch of the supernatural, séances, secluded country houses, dark secrets - all the hallmarks of Victorian gothic. This is a reasonably successful foray into the territory,
I thought it a little over-long - the pace flagged a bit at one stage, but it does enough to keep you involved nonetheless. On balance, a good read.
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with a couple of nice extra touches: crusading religion and music hall (nicely antipathetic to each other). There's also some commentary on the mores of the period, in a way that you wouldn't find in a contemporaneous novel, where the author would be more likely to share the prejudices of the characters. I thought it a little over-long - the pace flagged a bit at one stage, but it does enough to keep you involved nonetheless. On balance, a good read.
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LibraryThing member sianpr
Good depiction of the era and a light read. But plot could have been much tighter.
LibraryThing member Ant.Harrison
The Somnabulist by Essie Fox is another take on the increasingly popular Victorian gothic melodrama. It concerns Phoebe, the daughter of Maud Turner, who lives with her mother and aunt in the east end of London in the 1880s. The backdrop is Victorian music halls and spiritualism, with the usual
Fox has written a real potboiler, I guess trying to emulate the melodramas of Collins and Dickens; convoluted, interwoven plots, where nothing should be taken for granted, but all is revealed in the end. I didn't dislike the book, but I did find the narrative rather wearing after a while; it was as though the author was trying too hard to convince the reader that she had all the gothic ingredients and wasn't afraid to use them generously. Most of the book is told by Phoebe, but there are some stylistically clunky chapters told in the third person, and this compounded an uneven narrative. But on the whole the dialogue was convincing, and most of the characters rang true.
This isn't a badly written book, but I felt that it tried too hard...coincidence after coincidence followed one after the other, and on reflection there was probably one or two too many. It may have been best to have left a few loose ends loose, tying them all up seemed to stretch credibility too far, even allowing for the type of novel it is; the explanatory backstory concerning Mr Stephens is a case in point.
I was drawn to The Somnabulist because of its subject matter and because I love historical fiction, but there are better writers out there doing this sort of stuff - Sarah Waters, Barbara Ewing and Andrew Taylor, to name just a few. Still, I'd definitely read another book by Essie Fox and she's one to watch.
© Koplowitz 2012
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(very heavy) dose of family secrets, strange happenings, mysterious characters and misplaced lusts. Fox has written a real potboiler, I guess trying to emulate the melodramas of Collins and Dickens; convoluted, interwoven plots, where nothing should be taken for granted, but all is revealed in the end. I didn't dislike the book, but I did find the narrative rather wearing after a while; it was as though the author was trying too hard to convince the reader that she had all the gothic ingredients and wasn't afraid to use them generously. Most of the book is told by Phoebe, but there are some stylistically clunky chapters told in the third person, and this compounded an uneven narrative. But on the whole the dialogue was convincing, and most of the characters rang true.
This isn't a badly written book, but I felt that it tried too hard...coincidence after coincidence followed one after the other, and on reflection there was probably one or two too many. It may have been best to have left a few loose ends loose, tying them all up seemed to stretch credibility too far, even allowing for the type of novel it is; the explanatory backstory concerning Mr Stephens is a case in point.
I was drawn to The Somnabulist because of its subject matter and because I love historical fiction, but there are better writers out there doing this sort of stuff - Sarah Waters, Barbara Ewing and Andrew Taylor, to name just a few. Still, I'd definitely read another book by Essie Fox and she's one to watch.
© Koplowitz 2012
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LibraryThing member Violetthedwarf
This is too slight a story to hold up a book of this length.
Awards
British Book Award (Shortlist — New Writer — 2012)
Waverton Good Read Award (Longlist — 2011)
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
2011
Physical description
400 p.; 7.87 inches
ISBN
1409121194 / 9781409121190
Local notes
When seventeen-year old Phoebe Turner visits Wilton's Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage, she risks the wrath of her mother Maud who marches with the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close. While there, Phoebe is drawn to a stranger, the enigmatic Nathaniel Samuels who heralds dramatic changes in the lives of all three women.