The Pleasures of Men (Voice)

by Kate Williams

Spitalfields, 1840.

Catherine Sorgeiul lives with her Uncle in a rambling house in London's East End. She has few companions and little to occupy the days beyond her own colourful imagination. But then a murderer strikes, ripping open the chests of young girls and stuffing hair into their mouths to resemble a beak, leading the press to christen him The Man of Crows. And as Catherine hungrily devours the news, she finds she can channel the voices of the dead ... and comes to believe she will eventually channel The Man of Crows himself.

But the murders continue to panic the city and Catherine gradually realizes she is snared in a deadly trap, where nothing is as it first appears ... and lurking behind the lies Catherine has been told are secrets more deadly and devastating than anything her imagination can conjure.

With an elegant style and thrilling plot, The Pleasures of Men reveals the dark, beating heart of corrupt London during Queen Victoria's reign.

• ISBN10: 0241951399
• ISBN13: 9780241951392
• Publish Date: 19 January 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 2 August 2012
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Michael Joseph Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

This should have been a winner with me, a pre-Peeler Victorian murder mystery with an undercurrent of mental illness, this one was largely a miss for me. There were moments that worked, but overall it just wasn't me.

Catherine Sorgeiul lives in Spitalfields with her Uncle. She is getting older and there is a possiblilty that she won't find a husband. Her uncle is eccentric and she herself is prone to what were referred to as fits of imagining. She has spent some time in institutions after her mother dies followed rapidly by her father going missing. She was passed from relative to relative and her sanity has been eroded at every turn. It is possible that with a focus for her life she could ahve found something to do and made something of her life but the Victorian era didn't really allow for this.

And it was for Catherine I kept reading. However I was never sure if what she was experiencing was real or imagined. There were several times that I suspected her as the killer. In the end I disliked her unreliable narration and the story. It just didn't really work for me and I finished it feeling somehow cheated.