Synopsis:
London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.
As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything. A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.
Review:
Drawing both from both the 1864 novel “A String of Pearls,” by James Malcom Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, and the banging musical that is “Sweeney Todd,” David Demchuk’s and Corrine Leigh Clark’s “The Butcher’s Daughter,” is a grimy historical horror novel. Dripping with as much dread as it is lard, and as shrouded in mystery as it is covered in soot, “The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs Lovett,” is told through a series of letters to a journalist in evidence. A novel all about identity and how that can change with mistreatment and abuse, immerse yourself in the squalor and filth, manipulation and exploitation, and deceit and scandal of Victorian London, and, disturbed by what you find, perhaps seek respite in Mrs Lovett’s pie shop, and treat yourself to a meat pie. A 400 page novel that frankly slipped through my fingers, you can rifle through Emily Gibson’s correspondence for yourself from May 20th – it’s available already in the US. Thank you kindly to Titan Books for sending this one over!
It’s 1887, and after her mysterious disappearance, the correspondence between journalist, Emily Gibson, and the woman she seems convinced is Sweeney Todd’s infamous accomplice, end up in a dossier of evidence for her on-going case. Gibson writes inquiring as to whether the recipient has any knowledge of where -or who- Mrs. Lovett may be, having avoided the gallows and seemingly having vanished off of the face of the earth. The letters she receives back are not from the infamous pie-maker herself, but a Ms Margaret Evans, who is contained at St. Anne’s priory. The priory itself, following the loss of the reverend mother Mary Angelica, and under the new, cold stewardship of Sister Augustine, seems to be going through a turbulent time, but a more shocking and bumpy story still is Margaret’s recount of her own life, which she seems intent on telling the world. From her time in a butcher’s shop, to her employ as a maid, the priory’s visitant undeniably has a story to tell.
This is character driven horror at some of its absolute finest, intimate and human. The smoggy, soot-streaked setting of Victorian London, the choice they make, even the more depraved ones all felt truly authentic. Whilst queer and disabled representation may feel almost incompatible with the rigid social hierarchies, and plain intolerance of somewhere like Marylebone in the 19th Century, they’re woven seamlessly into the narrative, never feeling tokenistic or out of place. Simply real and important. A feminist riff upon the story that meditates on agency and also has a love story stuffed somewhere inside it’s meaty centre, there’s a lot -but never too much- for the reader to draw the lines between, and I had fun doing it. When you add all of this brilliance into the epistolary format, letters and newspaper clippings, the novel propels itself forward at a break-neck pace. I regret to inform you that my social media career has yet to take off properly, I still have some responsibilities outside of indulging in great horror, but even so, around them, I gobbled this book up in a sitting or two. Nothing about it clunks or jars, and it reads about as smoothly and efficiently as, say, a trapdoor beneath a barber’s chair.
I don’t want to, even for a second, critique Helena Bonham Carter’s performance as Mrs Lovett (although Angela Lansbury was objectively better in the original broadway run) or indeed Steven Sondheim’s script and lyrics (the man’s a genius). That being said, in “The Butcher’s Daughter,” Demchuk and Clark add more depth to… the character, than even the most powerhouse of performances could even hint at. There’s something inherently and uniquely intimate about following a character from their childhood to adulthood, and this novel, albeit obscured by jettisons of blood and… general ichor, is in many ways a coming-of-age one. The transformations that “The Butcher’s Daughter,” goes through are many, and none of them pleasant, or at least untainted. First, she’s Meg to her parents, before she becomes Margaret as a wealthy doctor’s maid and nurse-in-training, and then Peggy to those she eventually meets at Symposia Heliconia. Each onomastic shift in this story not only symbolises a new chapter in the protagonist’s life, but a fresh trauma. Identity in this novel is not represented as rigid or stable but something that is worn down over-time, reforged and often contorted beyond recognition. This book, in my opinion, is ultimately a meditation on the self as something that is fluid, porous, bruised by circumstance. Whilst often we are made stronger by the things that happen to us, we are also changed.
I am well familiar with the literary genius of David Demchuk, the obsession continues, and can’t wait to get my grubby hands on anything Corrine Leigh Clark may have written now I’ve glimpsed the elegance and venom she brings to the page. A feminist retelling of the iconic Tale of Sweeney Todd, that’s certainly not stingy on the butchery, and is twist-y and twist-ed in equal measure, I encourage you to attend the tale of Mrs. Lovett (it’s hitherto untold don’t you know).
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