By Mia Paton
I’ve always loved a good historical fiction, and Lizzie Pook’s latest novel is no exception. Set in the 1850s, a young woman called Maude Horton – our beautiful and clever protagonist – is regretfully told that her sister has died, due to a “tragic accident”. And yet, how could her death be an accident when she disguised herself as a boy and boarded a ship from London to the Arctic? Someone must have discovered her identity; someone must have killed her because she learned a terrible secret – Maude is certain of it.
This novel swaps between three perspectives: the protagonist, the villain, and journal excerpts written by Maude’s dead sister. Pook writes in such a way that means the reader is lost in suspense for most of the book. Instead of the reader knowing more than the characters – as is a common technique authors use to create a thrill when dear characters make the wrong decisions due to ignorance – the characters know way more than the readers. Maude gets her hands on her dead sister’s journal towards the start of Pook’s thrilling story and reads it all straight away, while us readers only get small excerpts at a time, spaced out through the entirety of the novel. So, while Maude is making lots of decisions to avenge her sister, while Maude seems to know why her sister has died, I knew absolutely nothing, and just had to trust she was making the right choices. I read the story blindly, with a sense of urgency, until the past was finally revealed to me as well, and everything fell into place.
When I first picked this novel up, I was convinced I knew what was going to happen. After all, the title is Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge. Simply reading that title introduced me to the main character, made me aware that something terrible had happened to her, and that she would get revenge for that terrible thing; in my mind, I already knew the whole plot. The novel even started at the ending – it said so on the first page: “Let us begin at the end, shall we? In a cold London square. A murderer is to be hanged.” Well, after reading that, I was certain I knew what the whole book was about. But Pook surprised me. There was way more nuance within these pages than I was expecting, and so many subplots and minor details that I thought were completely insignificant and brushed over entirely until all was revealed, and I realised they played a key role that I never would have imagined. Pook gave me a beginning, an ending, and then left me to scramble pieces of the middle together – it tested my mystery-solving skills and made me use more intellect than I have in a long time while reading.
Not only was Pook’s writing style encapsulating, but the setting of the novel itself was enough to intrigue me. Historical fiction has always been a favourite of mine, because, when done well, it’s like a little bit of time travel – an insight into what life was like in the past. Lizzie Pook’s Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge sets the scene of the mid-1800s to perfection. It touches on heavy themes of the times, including the aggressive sexism women were subjected to, and the torturous methods of “justice”. It was particularly satisfying, therefore, to read about a woman who uses sexism to her advantage and gets her own grisly justice in the end. I would recommend this novel to lovers of history, mystery, and thrilling tales.
Mia Paton (she/her) is a writer and editor currently studying a BFA in Creative Writing at QUT in Meanjin (Brisbane). She has short stories published in both ScratchThat Magazine and Dawn Street Zine. Mia typically writes a mixture of historical fiction and fantasy, and is in the process of finalising her first manuscript.
