The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock

Imogen Hermes Gowar Harvill Secker €15.99

London, 1785. John Hancock is a merchant who loses a ship but gains a mermaid, which he then exhibits as a ‘curiosity’. This gains him access to a bacchanalian high-society demi-monde where he encounters an infamous courtesan who changes his life for ever. This ambitious debut has many virtues: the writing is rich, opulent, at times witty, and Gowar captures the decadent, febrile atmosphere of late-18th-century London in impressive detail; but there are too many longueurs as you wait for something to happen. And her flirtation with magical realism seems almost perfunctory.