ORPHANS OF THE CARNIVAL by Carol Birch (Canongate £14.99)

JAMRACH’S Menagerie author Carol Birch’s new novel is a fictional retelling of the remarkable story of Julia Pastrana, an indigenous Mexican woman born with a genetic condition meaning her face and body were thickly covered with hair.

Also a rare disease thickened her lips and gums and she had irregular teeth, giving her face an apelike appearance, all of which led to her being exhibited at carnivals and in theatres around the world as the ‘Bear Woman’ or being advertised as a cross between a human and an ape.

She was, though, very intelligent and a talented singer and dancer.

Birch achieves the difficult task of putting herself inside this unusual character, bringing her to life as a sensitive, gentle and funny person cut off from normal life — off-stage she could not appear publicly without a veil for fear of alarming people or being attacked — and convincingly imagining her romance with Theodore Lent, the showman who put her on stage across America and Europe and eventually married her.

Despite the fascinating subject, the novel is longer than it need to have been with too much time spent on minor inconsequential characters. When it eventually picks up pace, though, it completely grips the emotions as it moves towards its heartbreaking end.