Book Review: The Circus Of Ghosts

Book cover of The Circus Of Ghosts by Barbara Ewing. Photo / Supplied

The Circus Of Ghosts by Barbara Ewing
Hachette $34.99

Barbara Ewing's seventh novel, The Circus Of Ghosts, is a fitting sequel to The Mesmerist, a novel set against a vibrant theatrical backdrop in Victorian London. The new novel transports the characters to the over-excited stage of New York City in the 1840s.

Ewing's love of research - her trips to a British research library and the streets of New York - ensures the city appears upon the page larger than life.

This is a city inventing itself and reinventing itself away from the class throttles of Britain. Landmarks, food, gangs, entertainment, danger zones and customs evoke a place full of flavour.

Her makeshift family of flamboyant characters matches the zesty bustle of New York perfectly: Cordelia, the mesmerist who got off a murder charge back home (and rightly so), her daughter, Gwenlliam, who inherited more than a tad of her mother's luminosity and strength, and the British detective who married Cordelia.

Add to these an elderly Frenchman skilled in the art of mesmerism and good manners, two old women and Cordelia's best friend, Rillie. The end result is an unconventional family that sticks together as though linked by blood.

There is a degree of narrative tension - on page one we are informed the lives of the mother and daughter are in danger. On one level the book is the greedy Englishman's pursuit of the pair and his attempt at kidnap and murder.

However, that plot momentum comes in fits and starts. I was more interested in the depiction of a world in a state of enormous change.

People were placing great faith in the expertise and logic of science rather than the irrational and inexplicable results of mesmerism. Primitive anaesthesia supersedes the original task of mesmerism to reduce pain and suffering.

Circuses are inventing and reinventing themselves to stay in tune with contemporary attitudes and to keep attracting the punters and their gold. Women are working not just because they need to help keep the coffers afloat, but also because they want to work.

Cordelia is like a forerunner to the women suffragettes. Her reaction to the terrible events she endured in The Mesmerist (fake marriage, near miscarriage of justice, her children deceived and kept from her) is to work in the world. Cordelia shows how to survive in the face of such devastation with an alluring mix of strength and wit.

I enjoyed the way various motifs rippled through the book: the way the light sets up the magic and mystery of Cordelia's ghostly acrobatic act, the way the light makes the faces in the new daguerreotypes so poignant, the way the light catches the New York streets.

This is ultimately a book of loves and dangers, and the way loves and dangers gnaw away at each other. Ewing sheds light on both. We move from the creepy perils of New York quarters that are off limits to all but gangs and scoundrels, to the lawlessness of California. We follow the slow realisation of the numbed Cordelia as she understands how to love. It's a good read.

Paula Green is an Auckland poet and children's author.