Patricia Duncker
Body Blows
Orphans of the Carnival
By Carol Birch
Canongate 380pp £14.99
Neo-Victorian fiction delights in freaks, curiosities and the monstrous, as did the Victorians. Carol Birch’s new book, a biographical novel about Julia Pastrana, a genuine performing freak, self-consciously incorporates several common characteristics of contemporary neo-Victorian writing. The novel is ‘based on a true story’ and follows the high road of the historical record rather than burrowing into the suggestive gaps. Birch also employs a double narrative. Julia’s story begins in the 1850s with her debut on Broadway, while a parallel, modern narrative set in Thatcher’s England (remember her famous suggestion that we should all embrace Victorian values) opens in a household of marginal eccentrics and aged-hippy types living on society’s border.
The real Julia Pastrana was a bearded lady, variously known as the ape woman, the baboon lady, the bear woman or the missing link. Her entire body was covered in thick hair. Her genetic condition is now known as hypertrichosis lanuginosa. She was examined by numerous doctors and
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘The Second World War was won in Oxford. Discuss.’
@RankinNick gives the question his best shot.
Nicholas Rankin - We Shall Fight in the Buttery
Nicholas Rankin: We Shall Fight in the Buttery - Oxford’s War 1939–1945 by Ashley Jackson
literaryreview.co.uk
For the first time, all of Sylvia Plath’s surviving prose, a massive body of stories, articles, reviews and letters, has been gathered together in a single volume.
@FionaRSampson sifts it for evidence of how the young Sylvia became Sylvia Plath.
Fiona Sampson - Changed in a Minute
Fiona Sampson: Changed in a Minute - The Collected Prose of Sylvia Plath by Peter K Steinberg (ed)
literaryreview.co.uk
The ruling class has lost its sprezzatura.
On porky rolodexes and the persistence of elite reproduction, for the @Lit_Review: