The Other Lives of Miss Emily White by AJ Ellwood

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

Publisher – Titan

Published – Out Now

Price – £9.99 paperback £6.99 Kindle eBook

1864. Banished from her parents’ farm to a boarding school for young ladies, Ivy feels utterly alone. In a crumbling and isolated seminary that has seen better days, she is shunned by the other pupils for her working-class origins, and mourns for her sister, who died not long after she was sent away.

Hope comes in the form of a new teacher, Miss Emily White, but almost immediately, suspicions are raised that she is not all she should be. Ivy is captivated, yet as her devotion grows, odd reports begin to circulate that Miss White has been glimpsed in the garden picking flowers whilst also teaching a class, leaving the school but stalking the halls at the same time.

As increasingly strange rumours abound, Ivy’s obsession spins out of control, and with Emily White’s future at stake, she will do anything to keep her only friend.

School obviously is a place of learning facts and skills we need in life but also where we learn a few things about people. It’s where we can see children can be very cruel especially in a pack plus we have the weird idea of the authority of teachers who will occasionally shock us with glimpses that they actually have a life outside of a classroom. I know one of my junior schoolteachers whom the kids loved to see had a much darker side that only came to light decades later. Therefore, it is fitting that A J Ellwood takes us into an excellent mysterious gothic thriller that will unsettle the reader in so many ways.

Ivy tells us of her schooldays in 1864 when she was sent by her wealthy grandparents to Miss Dawson’s Seminary out in the wealthy but isolated countryside. But Ivy has working class roots, mourns the loss of her beloved sister Daisy, and constantly feels an outsider – in particular rejected by the oldest girl Sophia whom the other girls in class idolise and who ensures that Ivy feels alone. For Ivy relief appears to come with the arrival of Emily White or as the customs of the school to encourage language studies Mademoiselle Blanc. Mis White and Ivy bond over a love of drawing and seem also to connect as being outsiders. But Miss White soon finds herself with a confrontation with Sophia that spirals out of one moment of teenage rebellion but constantly escalates with allegations of Miss White having strange powers and a malevolent darker double people claim to see around the school; this conflict has an escalating impact on the school and their pupils. Tensions rise; sides are taken; and danger waits for everyone.

AJ Ellwood has created a brilliant gothic thriller that constantly plays with questions of identity and requiring us as the reader just like Ivy to ponder whose side to take. Throughout the novel is the motif of the characters in the Victorian spinning image toy known as the zoetrope where to give life to one image you need to have multiple images of one person all slightly different. This is very much applicable to our trip to Miss Dawson’s school where every character we meet has a different and often conflicting facet to them which makes us have to decide which is their true self. Our setting is a place that says they focus on improvement but we particularly as modern readers will see this is a place designed to ensure the girls are turned into the women that Victorian Society expects – capable yet obedient wives skilled in the softer arts and not to think at all about trying to be their own women in any way. This duality also applies to the pupils who on the surface are dulcet, pretty maids all in a row but as Ivy knows are very much a clique and happy to immediately reject you if they find you wanting.

All of which means Ellwood has created an environment that just needs a spark to really expose the darker side of this school and a simple case of disobedience towards Miss White by Sophia quickly cascades to Sophia claiming (thanks to her family’s apparent ‘sensitivities’) she claims the nee teacher has a dark presence around her. One that starts to impact the school and hurt the girls. Ivy as our narrator sits at first on the side-lines but then starts to focus on defending Miss White from the girl’s cruelty but the escalations soon get more and more noticeable and bloodier. Ellwood capture that innocent petty cruelty of children perfectly and we all know what that can lead to.

Ellwood has very cleverly set the story up for a modern reader to have our own view of this world and as we are twenty-first century adults we also may better understand than Ivy why so many pupils fall under Sophia’s spell of believing dark magic is afoot. Which makes it really interesting is when we too via Ivy see very macabre and strange things start to happen in front of us. This novel has an increasing pressured and darkened presence to match our alleged presence Sophia’s group claim is a doppelgänger of Miss White’s devising to bring death and disaster for all.  Fittingly for this period we have a clash of scepticism versus occultism in the tale but which side is right? As a reader I’m then torn between my natural instinct to support the underdogs against rich upper-class bullies and yet also being pulled into thinking something I’m seeing isn’t quite adding up. As Icy relates to us her experience as a teenage girl we only get her worldview of events as they unfurl, and she is therefore more an unconsciously unreliable narrator as she too is not in all the facts. Miss White is very much an enigmatic character which helps aid the confusion as we see her as a breath of fresh air that Ivy desperately needs in this cloying school; but we slowly find Miss White to be a woman with her own secrets and one seemingly prepared to fight back against her accusers. For me this novel is like one of those Victorian drawings where at first, we just see a lady looking at the mirror but soon after a few prompts and revelations realise that a mysterious older stranger woman is also staring back at us. Ellwood cleverly maintains the tension as to whether what we see is human nature at its worst or something more supernatural all the way throughout the story right up until the last few devastating chapters allowing us as reader to finally take a step back and put it all together; plus applaud the skill Ellwood that deployed to have taken us on this journey.

The Other Lives of Miss Emily White is a gothic thriller that really casts a spell on the reader as much as our new teacher seems to cast one on her school and pupils. Full of surprises and also a constantly dark and foreboding atmosphere that has the added joy of us readers becoming unwitting accomplices to what happens. We will take sides for the best of reasons and then perhaps change our minds; and then further change them. This book is the best kind of shared dark secret – one you’ll want to explore all the way to the end staying up late and then bringing other readers along with you. Strongly recommended for fans of the gothic!