The Whispering Muse by Laura Purcell

I would like to thank Raven Books for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Raven Books

Published - Out Now

Price - £14.99 hardback £7.19 Kindle eBook

Be careful what you wish for... it may just come true.

At The Mercury Theatre in London's West End, rumours are circulating of a curse.

It is said that the lead actress Lilith has made a pact with Melpomene, the tragic muse of Greek mythology, to become the greatest actress to ever grace the stage. Suspicious of Lilith, the jealous wife of the theatre owner sends dresser Jenny to spy on her, and desperate for the money to help her family, Jenny agrees.

What Jenny finds is a woman as astonishing in her performance as she is provocative in nature. On stage, it's as though Lilith is possessed by the characters she plays, yet off stage she is as tragic as the Muse who inspires her, and Jenny, sorry for her, befriends the troubled actress. But when strange events begin to take place around the theatre, Jenny wonders if the rumours are true, and fears that when the Muse comes calling for payment, the cost will be too high.

I love watching a good play at a theatre. Its in many ways a unique experience not just actor’s and writer’s words and performances mixing but a good audience can also bring a unique dynamic feeding both and the theatre itself magically transforms from a stage and set to a portal to a different world. It can make us laugh but it can also show our darker sides - violence, death and murder outside a theatre all crimes to run in the opposite direction from but inside they’re a portal for our entertainment and for the the older play’s graphic content well that is just culture innit? But the thing about portals is that they can let other things in and then who knows what will happen? In Laura Purcell’s entrancing gothic novel The Whispering Muse we have a tale of Victorian gothic set in the land of greasepaint where tragedies can happen off-stage as well as on.

Jenny is a young woman in Victoria London facing financial ruin as now the sole guardian of her very young brothers and sisters. Recently forced to leave her well paid role for a wealthy she faces exclusion from society. Fortunately Jenny’s family connections bring her to the attention of Mrs Dyer; whose husband owns The Mercury Theatre. Mrs Dyer fears an ambitious young actress named Lilith may be getting her husband’s attention and Mrs Dyer will pay Jenny a great deal to be Lilith’s new dresser and to spy on what exactly the nature of Lilith’s hold on her husband is. For a significant sum Jenny agrees and finds herself exposed to the strange and superstitious world of the stage. One where certain words cannot be uttered; where people fear bad luck and then Jenny gets to witness the horrible death of one of the country’s leading actors. The aftermath of which suddenly thrusts Lilith into the spotlight; especially when given the actor’s infamous watch but at the same time it starts to create a trail of ever more horrible events and deaths that Jenny finds herself witnessing and trying to stop escalating.

This is a hugely entertaining horror story firstly very much focused on giving the reader the sense of London stage behind the scenes in Victorian England. We get ambitious starlets; flamboyant actors and dressers and salt of the earth yet incredibly superstitious theatre hands mixing with the rich owners of the theatre who see life as a fun game. For Jenny its an initial culture shock - why can’t she say Macbeth when its the name of the play? But Jenny’s character is our way into this world as she learns the theatre’s secrets which she both loved and starts to fear at the same time as us. Its a neat way to help us try to imagine what this time would be like. Grounding the story though initially is the unusual balance of Jenny and Mrs Dyer. Mrs Dyer is initially a wealthy benefactor and wrong woman Jehby is happy to help; a cause of spying on Lilith that Jenny for very personal reasons initially sees Lilith as the enemy to bring down but as Jenny gets to know Lillith their relationship is ever changing - not quite friends and not quite enemies but they do get to understand each other which makes all their engagements fascinating to see how it ends. Alongside that is Lilith’s strange changes in personality and the very graphic changes to her body we start to witness all signalling something or someone malevolently attacking her. It helps that Purcell makes all their interactions flow with good barbs and insults that remind us we have two smart women trying to make a success of their lives despite the world they live in we may find our initial sympathies start to change as the story tells us more about the women in it. We get many reminders that this period was cruel on married and unmarried women in good measure and the non-supernatural elements of the tale are refreshingly very strong and compel us to see how events will finally turn out.

But of course there is indeed a supernatural element to enjoy and Purcell has crafted this tale carefully. It would be very easy to just let the theatre tropes fly turned up to 11 but instead Purcell creates a much better slowly building sense of terrible things all getting closer to the Theatre’s cast and crew. From an actor’s bloody and unexpected death on stage to a memorable and devastating conclusion we get regular escalations in horrible things happening that seem to centre around the dead actor’s watch now in Lilith’s hands - is this really the spirit of a Muse trapped into a watch? For the first half of the novel events could be easily just be down to coincidence but then in a memorable scene where things go horribly wrong the feeling of horror based on what we witness warns us that far more terrible things are coming. I also really appreciated that the horror is not just supernatural in origin but also down to human frailty and greed too and as this tale exposes both the reader my be hard pressed to say which is the biggest danger for Jenny and her new stage family. Cursed objects; scorned wives and the sexism of the society all make choices for Jenny and also we later find for Lilith quite a dangerous place to navigate.

I hugely enjoyed this tale. We are taken to this strange world that is already a mix of the real and the unreal at the best of times and now seems under a cloud of bad omens and portents that suggest more pain is to come - or from the reader’s perspective a lot of fun chills and shivers to experience! Purcell continues to be an author who knows how to weave characters, setting and a deliciously creepy atmosphere into a compelling and suitably dramatic tale well worth curling up on dark night with.