It’s intricate and crisp, finely layered with keen observation.

This supernatural concoction really appealed, but did the novel match the promise? If I was to give it a percentage then I’d say it hit 75% – a clear four star, but no more, which is a shame because I am totally in love with Sarah Perry’s writing. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.īut, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude.

That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts-or, at least, refuge. It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. I’d heard glimmers of mixed reviews on Bookstagram but I decided not to read them, preferring to be led by the haunting premise alone:įor centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history’s darkest waters-and now, in Sarah Perry’s breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction. However, I can say that this is yet another example of Sarah Perry’s significant storytelling abilities.I’m always attracted to ghost stories in the winter so Melmoth by Sarah Perry was one of my first choices for January. It is difficult to say any more without spoiling the subtle mysteries of the novel. There is a certain power in it that can’t be denied and definitely had me hooked, just as the classics have. After all, this is Melmoth for a modern reader rather than the original Melmoth the Wanderer. It captures the uneasy magic of the seminal gothic texts but somehow still feels modern. Each layer of the story seeps from the novel until you too are checking for a shadow that might just be stalking. You are swept into the tale, wrapped up in the unsettling drama that unfolds across the pages. Melmoth is certainly full of mystery and incredibly atmospheric. It is as if this woman – the titular Melmoth- is lurking in every shadow Helen encounters as she desperately tries to understand the centuries old mystery. There, she hears tales of a mysterious woman in black who haunts the damned and desperate.

It tells the story of Helen Franklin, an unhappy soul who has settled in Prague. This is the newest novel from Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent. That’s exactly what happened with Melmoth. Give me a gothic retelling by an author I already love and I’m very happy indeed. Give me a gothic book and I am a happy woman.

Melmoth review