I’ve had me a histfic fest this week. Along with Stacey Hall's The Familiars this is another book I’ve been wanting to read for ages. I believe the writer has subsequently published another book in the time that I’ve had this sitting waiting! I comfort myself with the thought that I am contributing to the endurance of a book over time by reading and blogging about it a good while after the initial excitement has died down, keeping a book on the radar. It does sadden me sometimes that a book which is all over social media one minute, on everyone’s TBR, everyone’s blog, garnering all the praise and accolades and then it disappears. Others take its place, no less deserving, maybe, but it seems that books become all but forgotten to make way for others.
‘Is prisoner Ruth Butterham mad or a murderer? Victim or villain?
Dorothea Truelove is young, wealthy and beautiful. Ruth Butterham is young, poor and awaiting trial for murder.
When Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate Prison, she finds herself drawn to Ruth, a teenage seamstress - and self-confessed murderess - who nurses a dark and uncanny secret. A secret that is leading her straight to the gallows. As Ruth reveals her disturbing past to Dorothea, the fates of these two women entwine, and with every revelation, a new layer of doubt is cast...
Can Ruth be trusted? Is she mad, or a murderer?’
Two women who couldn’t be more different on the surface find their paths crossing fuelled by that Victorian propensity for doing good and finding that charity begins far from home. Thus it is that Dorothea Truelove, oh how Dickens would have loved her name, becomes fascinated almost obsessed by the confessions and revelations of Ruth Butterham, who admits to and believes that she is a murderer. As well as Dickens you might also experience a flavour of Sarah Waters and a DuMaurieresque menace.
The two women’s histories are told as a dual narrative with Ruth’s retrospective account told to Dorothea from her prison cell. Dorothea’s is recounted as a present day
account of her life and inclinations. Both raise questions as to the treatment and understanding of women in a society bound in a straitjacket of its own convention.
On one level it is as if Purcell has carried on from a female perspective where Dickens left off.
But the Corset is also something of a gothic thriller, a measured thriller rather than a fast paced swashbuckler. But it is brutal in places which fills you with a cold shiver. There’s a also a sense of something almost supernatural in Ruth’s naive beliefs. Gothic is a much bandied term nowadays. True gothic, to my mind, IS horrifying. This book satisfies the criteria.
It’s a well constructed narrative that pulls the reader along with it willingly. The juxtaposition of the two past and present narratives vie for your attention. You’re desperate to find out exactly what happened for Ruth to confess to murder and you also want to know how Dorothea’s aspirations progress. I’m trying to word this carefully because I don’t wish to offer any spoilers. Although I feel like I’m the last person on the planet to read this book!
It’s a tight plot with an unexpected twist at the end. Cleverly executed as the poor unwitting reader is led to believe one thing and is unpreprared for the ultimate revelation. A real chiller thriller.
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