Galley Talk

Sarah Bagby, Watermark Books, Wichita, Kans.

by Staff -- Publishers Weekly, 4/9/2007

Since I so enjoyed Clare Clark's historical novel The Great Stink, I immediately read The Nature of Monsters (Harcourt, May), a novel set in early 18th-century London. Earthy descriptions of the city, superstition about the nature of religion and evil, and a mingling of a "naïve" sensibility with medical research provide the backdrop for a suspenseful story reminiscent of The Dress Lodger. Clark's ability to conjure a London quite different from the one we know today delights and disgusts. She offers powerful insight into the human heart and evocative descriptions of the living conditions and social mores of the time. In a secret laboratory, an apothecary curious about the nature of evil studies the effects on a fetus in utero when the mother experiences primal fear and trauma. As lives are bought and sold, a struggling bookseller offers a counterpoint by responding to the world with reason, intellect and kindness. It's a beautifully humane center to the storm of fantastic theories of the practice of science and research in a time of superstition, madness and fear.