Through young adulthood together, in letters only, thousands of milesĪpart, eventually declaring their love for one another. Grounds she describes as much the way Staplefield looked. She is his age, her parents were killed in an accidentĪnd she has been crippled by it. He strikes up aĬorrespondence with an English "penfriend," Alice Jessel, when he is 13Īnd a half, living in a desolate place with a frantic mother and a His horse and cart." It's the sort of childhood idyll that the timidĪnd lonely Gerard believes in and longs for.
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Bartholomew who delivered fresh milk and eggs to their house with There were things they "didn't have in Mawson, chaffinchesĪnd mayflies and foxgloves and hawthorn, coopers and farriers and old Happiest when speaking fondly of Staplefield, her childhood home, where Paranoid, thin, and fretful type with an "anxious, haunted look." By Why this excessive reaction? She is a worried, His mother discovers him and gives him theīeating of his life. Yet I kept longing to return to Constance and her adventures among the half-crazy, half-opportunistic mediums and charlatans of 1880s London.Ī thoroughly well written tale of mortal fear, greed and exploitation, and the soul-crushing compromises expected of young women in the 19th century, The Séance establishes one certainty: John Harwood is a writer of exceptional ability, who handles the psychological and supernatural implications of the ghost story with a bright and critical mind.Ten, sneaks into his mother's room and unlocks a secret drawer, only toįind a picture of a woman he has never seen before, but one that he willįind again and again. These complications and their pay-offs have the quality of distant, though exquisite variations on a theme. The mystery at the heart of the subtly connected, parallel stories may shed light on several family questions, which have plagued Constance since childhood. Eleanor's trials are faithfully recounted by way of a journal, retained for years by a solicitor who suffered an excruciating personal loss.
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The bulk of the novel relates the unhappy life and apparently cursed marriage of Eleanor Unwin to a renowned mesmerist, a charismatic man who may or may not have come into his family estate by nefarious means. By forming a link, however false or real, between the grieving mother and the soul of her departed little girl, Constance raises her own significance and gains the attention she has always craved from a disinterested parent.ĭelving into the paranormal societies of the day, Constance inadvertently triggers a greater separation between her mother, who is desperate to believe, and her father, a calculating man of science whose scorn for the occult is only one of many complaints against the women in his family. Her stated desire is to alleviate her mother's anguish over the loss of her favorite child. With these words the young woman, who was five years old when her younger sister died of scarlet fever, launches into an explanation of why and how she came to be a sort of spirit guide. So begins Constance Langton's journal in January 1889.
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"If my sister Alma had lived, I should never have begun the séances." And the story played out among these characters-although the mystery at the heart of it is expertly drawn-is not as delightful as the first promising pages of the novel. These characters, and the dangers they face as they are drawn into a web of supernatural inquiry led by a talented mesmerist, are far less sympathetic and less bewitching than Constance Langton. It's just that the first character introduced is by far the most interesting, and we lose her point of view on page 48 and do not return to it until page 236.īetween these widely separated sections-which comprise the history of Constance Langton-we meet a woman in peril and the family solicitor who loves and wants to protect her from a husband who may be wicked or simply terribly misunderstood. There's nothing wrong about this approach. Instead of punctuating the narrative with bits of new information, the journals and letters written by various characters divide the novel into distinct sections.
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The Séance takes a similar, epistolary approach. He skillfully constructed certain relationships based entirely on these epistles, developed across many miles and many years. In The Ghost Writer Harwood made excellent use of letters over great distances, and the ways in which written correspondence can both reveal and conceal crucial information. If it lacks the final, emotional kick that left readers of the first novel breathless and dizzy, blame the formal structure for driving a slight wedge between the reader and the author's most exciting character. It is every bit as cleverly crafted and meticulously researched as The Ghost Writer. The Séance is John Harwood's second novel.