The Fascination
In this gothic novel set in Victorian London, Essie Fox takes readers back in time to explore the fascination with disabilities of all sorts, populating the book with beautifully drawn characters in a convincing historical setting.
The story cuts between the viewpoint of Theo, an orphan raised by Lord Seabrook; his grandfather, who is overly interested in anatomical deformities and ‘freaks’ of nature; and Keziah, twin to Tilly. The girls, born into a nomadic family, are identical – save that Tilly stopped growing when she was five years old. Their cruel father, a quack, forces his daughters into promoting his ‘elixir’ until at the age of fifteen he sells his girls on to an Italian known as the Captain. Luckily, rather than exploiting them, the Captain includes them into the family of outcasts which he has created and into which they fit – Tilly at first more easily than Keziah. Similarly, Theo is cast away by his grandfather and has to postpone his dream of studying medicine to take on work at a museum of horrors.
The two stories come together as the young people first meet at a fair and then are reunited ten years later, when Theo comes across the girls and the Captain. The Fascination at this point develops plot and gathers pace as the main characters are put in danger. Theo, on the one hand, seeks to understand more about his past and Keziah, on the other, seeks to protect her beautiful and talented sister from those who would exploit her.
This is a tender, beautifully written meditation on what it meant in Victorian times to be an outsider, or to be born different. In contrast to the ‘freakshows’ of the time that elevated the audience’s gaze and reduced those on display to that of the other, The Fascination takes as its subject those gazed upon and inspected and gives them agency instead.
