The Somnambulist

Author/Guide: Essie Fox

Why a Booktrail?

Late 1800s: A thrilling journey around the sites and sounds of the theatre and music hall world of Victorian London.

ISBN: 978-1409121190
Genre: Fiction, Historical

Comment

What you need to know before your trail

Phoebe Turner, 17, visits Wilton’s Music Hall to watch her Aunt Cissy performing on stage. She is captivated by the dancing and the music. Unlike her mother Maud who supports the Hallelujah Army, campaigning for all London theatres to close.

But Phoebe’s love of the theatre continues to grow. soon she meets a stranger who introduces himself as Nathaniel Samuels. When offered the position of companion to Nathaniel’s reclusive wife, Phoebe leaves her life in London’s East End for Dinwood Court in Herefordshire — a house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of truths.

Locations

Reset

Travel Guide

Essie Fox paints Phoebe’s world wonderfully building a very visual and tactile world centered around the old music halls, theatres and cobbled streets to life.

Wilton’s famous music hall features prominently

There’s a list of places in the back of the book which refer to the real places in and around London where you really should go to step inside this world that Essie has crafted so well. She has painted quite a wonderful picture of a new view of Victorian London and a range or cast of characters that could quite easily be on the stage for real.

“You know… every heart holds its secrets”

And with the best of gothic mysteries, there is a big dark empty house full of mystery and intrigue. Something has happened there or in the dark wood surrounding the house and Phoebe, sharing a house with a reclusive woman, is the one to investigate what is going on.

Essie loves the Victorian period and it shows – not only in the descriptions and fleshing out of the characters but in the landscapes and settings so carefully brought back to life. This is a novel of the sights and sounds of a bygone era in London and a spooky one at that.

Don’t forget to visit Hampton Court in Herefordshire on which the fictional Dinwood Court is modelled. Mind you if you see the Somnambulist painting hanging anywhere, you might want to start walking in the other direction…