This week’s #spellbooksaturday is an appropriate offering as we rapidly approach spooky season…
The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
[Content warnings: body horror, surgery & gore, death of a child, self-harm, etc.]
Practical, unassuming Jane Shoringfield has done the calculations, and decided that the most secure path forward is this: a husband, in a marriage of convenience, who will allow her to remain independent and occupied with meaningful work. The dashing but reclusive doctor Augustine Lawrence agrees to her proposal with only one condition: that she must never visit Lindridge Hall, his crumbling family manor outside of town. Yet on their wedding night, an accident strands her at his door in a pitch-black rainstorm, and she finds him changed. Gone is the bold, courageous surgeon, and in his place is a terrified, paranoid man―one who cannot tell reality from nightmare, and fears Jane is an apparition, come to haunt him. By morning, Augustine is himself again, but Jane knows something is deeply wrong at Lindridge Hall, and with the man she has so hastily bound her safety to. Set in a dark-mirror version of post-war England, Caitlin Starling crafts a new kind of gothic horror from the bones of the beloved canon. This ‘Crimson Peak‘-inspired story assembles, then upends, every expectation set in place by Shirley Jackson and ‘Rebecca,’ and will leave readers shaken, desperate to begin again as soon as they are finished.
[source: bookshop.org]
Bookriot described the novel as “like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell meets Mexican Gothic meets Crimson Peak,” which sounded incredibly promising, and on the surface I can understand these comaprisons— it’s a gothic horror with characters undertaking strange occult rituals, but beyond that, the comparison falls apart. As a protagonist, I rather enjoyed Jane Lawrence née Shoringfield— with allusions to her practicing appropriate social responses and her passionate love of mathematics, Jane reads as neurodivergent, and her character’s journey is satisfying. While the novel failed to live up to my (admittedly high) expectations, becoming somewhat repetitive in its third act, the biggest downfall was its gratuitous gore— honestly, I found myself skimming passages, as Starling seems to go in more for shock than for building actual tension and suspense. I wanted to like the novel, and it wasn’t bad, certainly, but it wasn’t great either.
Have you read The Death of Jane Lawrence? What were your thoughts? Share in the comments!
I have a Bookshop.org list of #spellbooksaturday features for folks to peruse, but in the spirit of transparency, as a Bookshop.org affiliate, I receive a small percentage of book sales purchased through my links. If you find that off-putting, feel free to shop directly through bookshop.org or your own local bookseller! My only goal here is to resist Amazon and the mega-rich.
DID YOU ENJOY THIS SPELLBOOK SATURDAY FEATURE? SHOP THE LIST ON BOOKSHOP.ORG, OR CHECK OUT SOME MORE READING RECOMMENDATIONS…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
