Pandora
Set during the cold wet year of 1799, in the Dickensian milieu of a struggling London shop of antiquities, this story’s protagonists are Dora (in full, Pandora) Blake, an orphan mourning the death of her antiquarian parents, her uncle and guardian Hezekiah, and his companion or ‘housekeeper’ Lottie. Young Edward Lawrence, keen to make his name as a historian via an important discovery, is referred by a mysterious stranger to Dora and Hezekiah’s shop. Dora is also striving firstly to launch herself as a jewellery designer, and then, with Edward, to solve the mystery of the origin of the Grecian urn that Hezekiah has secreted in the shop’s basement.
I was very engaged by Dora from her first appearance, sitting in a chilly attic creating brooches and necklaces from trinkets collected by her tame magpie. As the plot develops, she falls to the mercy of her uncle, who is driven by greedy obsession to worsening acts of duplicity and wickedness. Brutal but vulnerable, I found him a compelling character. Real-life figures such as Joseph Bramah, the locksmith, and Sir William Hamilton (tolerant husband of Nelson’s mistress) make important appearances. Distractingly, the editing is poor. For example, we have ‘axel’ for axle, ‘clean’ for cleaner, ‘purist’ for ‘purest’. Sir William Hamilton is referred to repeatedly as ‘Lord Hamilton’—a title he never actually enjoyed. The plot is propulsive, if a little clunky at times, and there are nicely observed descriptions of weather, setting and characters. Secrets emerge about the deaths of Dora’s parents, and there are even hints that this mysterious urn may indeed be the original Pandora’s Box of mythology. On the whole I greatly enjoyed this book, though I felt Edward the nominal hero was less interesting than the characters surrounding him.
