“My patron,” said Trelawny, “would like to do again what she did in A.D. 60.” [p. 262]
On paper (ha, or on Kindle) this should have been a novel I adored: Pre-Raphaelites, vampires, Boadicea (sic), subterranean London ... But somehow it didn't click. This might be a case of right book, wrong time: it might be that Hide Me Among the Graves is a (more or less standalone) sequel to The Stress of Her Regard, of which I recall little other than disliking it. Or it might simply be the cat-ghosts, which distressed me.
The vampiric spirit of John Polidori, formerly physician to Lord Byron, is haunting -- and inspiring -- his niece and nephew, Christina and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Worse, he plans to possess a young girl, surprise daughter of a veterinary surgeon and a now-reformed prostitute who's known to Christina. And Polidori is not the only threat to them, nor the most impressive.
The relationship between Christina and Polidori is abusive, unpleasant and likely metaphorical: the curse that's visited upon Dante Gabriel's wife Lizzie intersects nicely with known history. The sense of a magical underlay to ordinary life is very well done here, though Powers' supernatural London occasionally felt somewhat thin. I did like the reworkings of 'Bells of St Clements' as ancient invocations: but I'm not convinced that Thames water is as salty as it would need to be for one element of the plot to work. Maybe in Victorian times ...?
It's hard to pinpoint why this didn't really work for me. Powers' prose is vivid and inventive, and his plot well-constructed. I knew enough of the real history of the Rossettis to appreciate how the fantastical elements wound through it. The characterisation -- especially of the original characters, Cavendish and McKee -- is solid, and the magical system coherent enough that I suspected one of the twists from early on. (Sadly, like quite a bit of the plot, it involved a woman being tricked or compelled into sexual activity. Hmm, that might have something to do with my lack of enjoyment.) In terms of ancient, inhuman entities interacting with historical figures, I'd rather reread Powers' Declare.
This is, incidentally, the second novel I've read this year (the first was Affinity) where one of the characters has a house on Cheyne Walk in Chelsea.
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