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

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Laura Purcell excels in the territory she has claimed as her own, the dark, disturbing and the tragic in this, with her chilling, atmospheric Victorian gothic storytelling with its elements of horror, with its blood and gore, as she slowly immerses the reader in the drama laden world of the characters that inhabit the Mercury Theatre in London's West End. The narrative is structured around 5 plays that echo the themes and issues of the characters, whilst simultaneously driving the storylines onwards. It soon becomes apparent that it is no accident that the plays include Dr Faustus and Macbeth. Jenny Wilcox is a desperate woman, drowning in a precarious situation exacerbated by her brother Greg, leaving her solely responsible for her family. So when she is made a job offer that she cannot refuse, she accepts, the pay is generous, there is a house and includes much needed essential medical treatment for a sibling, but will she live to regret her decision?

The Whispering Muse: The most spellbinding gothic novel of

The book is constructed around a series of plays, each one forming an "Act" of the novel. I'm sure there's some very in depth analysis that could be done around the choice of plays and how they drive the plot of the story, but for me they just felt like they fit it really well. The different tragedies staged in the Mercury showed us different aspects of our stars as things grew progressively more perilous and frightening. 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."

The Whispering Muse isn’t necessarily creepy or scary like The Silent Companions, although there definitely are a few moments, but it’s dark, gothic and unashamedly unsettling. 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.

The Whispering Muse: The most spellbinding gothic novel of The Whispering Muse: The most spellbinding gothic novel of

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. A tremor shook Lilith’s frame. Her eyes flew open, fixed and staring at the gallery. The audience looked over their shoulders. Did she see something we couldn’t?” Nolan, Tom (14 June 2019). "Mysteries: The Phrenologist and the Seamstress". Wall Street Journal . Retrieved 11 May 2023. The year before, I had traveled to Greece to be at the opening ceremony of the 2004 Olympic Games, in Athens, where Björk sang the song that she and I had written for the occasion. The lyrics had been inspired by the Greek myths, with their cycles of metamorphosis and their complicated interactions between man and the superior powers that surround him, and so I made a point during my stay to visit the ruins of the great Temple of Poseidon, at Sounion. There, I discovered that Poseidon had never left the dilapidated temple, that in fact he still lay, in his magnificent blueness, at the bottom of the cliffs that supported this structure that men had so long ago built in his honor. With the memory of that year’s Indonesian tsunami fresh in my mind, I knew that, although he was calm and beautiful on the day of my visit to his temple, Poseidon remained an uncontrollable, unpredictable force. He and his fellow gods from Mount Olympus had not forsaken us, even if we had forsaken them. Set in Victorian England we are introduced to the world of theatre and all the superstitions it holds. After her elder brother abandons them our protagonist Jenny is struggling to provide for her younger siblings. She is desperate and wants to create a better life for them all so when Mrs Dyer makes her a generous offer, Jenny finds it hard to say no.The fourth in a series of posts in which we ask writers about the cultural influences on their work.