Dazzling debut’s catch of the day
THE MERMAID AND MRS HANCOCK
by Imogen Hermes Gowar Harvill Secker, £12.99
THIS accomplished, captivating debut novel rooted in earthy Georgian London is essential reading for anyone who enjoys richly researched historical fiction and fans of Sarah Waters, Sarah Perry or Jessie Burton will devour it.
Jonah Hancock is an affluent, portly, middle-aged merchant, a man on his way up in the world. But he is lonely, haunted by the ghost of his son who died in childbirth along with Jonah’s much-missed wife. He longs for someone to share his life with but instead he buries himself in work and as the novel opens, he is distracted by anxiety about his missing cargo ship the Calliope.
At last the Calliope’s Captain Jones appears on Jonah’s doorstep but he drops a bombshell. He has traded Jonah’s valuable ship for a mermaid corpse. Jonah is aghast. He is a serious businessman with a reputation to uphold. What is he to do with this fierce, snarling mermaid carcass?
In the event the mermaid goes on display and becomes the toast of London. Captain Jones is vindicated as people queue to see it and the creature swells Jonah’s coffers. So it comes to the attention of Mrs Chapell who runs a high-class brothel in Covent Garden. It is a magnet for aristocrats and politicians and was home to courtesan Angelica Neal until she became a kept woman living in the home of a duke. However, he recently died without remembering Angelica in his will.
Longing for independence, Angelica refuses to move back to Mrs Chapell’s, instead taking a flat in Soho with her beleaguered assistant who cannot make ends meet. Angelica needs a wealthy husband but falls head over heels for the aristocratic yet penniless George Rockingham.
ANGELICA and Jonah’s paths cross when Mrs Chapell hires the mermaid at vast expense and organises a lavish party to amuse her beau monde clients with the mermaid as the centrepiece.
Angelica is assigned to entertain Jonah at the party. Jonah is instantly smitten with her voluptuous, spirited beauty but his middle-class sensibilities are shocked by lewd scenes in the brothel. He walks out in disgust and sells the repugnant mermaid.
He cannot forget Angelica but the courtesan is so consumed with love for Rockingham that it is intriguingly difficult to guess who might become the Mrs Hancock of the book’s title.
Debut novelist Imogen Hermes Gowar spent nearly three years researching and writing this novel, inspired by a period when she worked in the British Museum and encountered its 18th-century “mermaid”, a mummified splicing of monkey and fish.
The novel sparkles with fascinating facts and insights into a vibrant period of history. She captures the colourful, filthy reality of the streets of London and the rustic relative tranquillity of Deptford and Greenwich.
We bear witness to the emergence of the middle class and a gradual shift towards the buttoned-up mores of the Victorian period. She explores the question of women and their historic lack of independence, asking whether in the 18th century being a prostitute was really so different to being a wife.
Hermes Gowar writes with elegance, eloquence and charm, doing a credible job of capturing 18th-century speech patterns. There are occasional uneven shifts in tone, particularly when a kind of magical realism prevails towards the end. And when Angelica undergoes a shift in her circumstances, she also experiences a personality change that doesn’t entirely convince.
But Imogen Hermes Gowar is undoubtedly a gifted writer. The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock is a dense, rewarding, immersive novel, spilling over with charm and spirit, and deserving of great success.