‘I was interested in the idea of storytelling’
Alys Key talks to author Elizabeth Macneal about second novel syndrome and the world of circuses and showmen
Self-doubt is not something you’d expect to be a problem for Elizabeth Macneal, whose first novel, The Doll Factory, about a young woman who becomes a model for a pre-raphaelite artist, was a bestseller. But, as it turns out, second-novel syndrome is a very real phenomenon.
“You know it’s a cliché,” she laughs. “But if there is any person writing a second book who doesn’t suffer from that, I am envious.” After the whirlwind success of her 2019 debut, the process of writing her new book Circus of Wonders has been very different.
“I was definitely blocked by lots of imposter syndrome,” says the 32-year-old, who was born in Edinburgh and now lives in London. It was not just an issue of confidence, but of suddenly entering the public sphere and having to change how she interacted with responses to her work. “When The Doll Factory came out, I wanted to read every review, every thought. I would search Twitter, look at Net galley, Goodreads, Amazon.” This impulse came from her life before being published, when she appreciated any feedback on her writing.
But eavesdropping on what the internet is saying about you is enough to overwhelm even the thickest-skinned. “It’s like being in the locker room and you hear two girls whispering about you.”
Fortunately, Macneal managed to overcome this to produce Circus of Wonders, in which a woman called Nell becomes the central attraction of a circus because of her distinctive birthmarks.
The book manages the same feat as Macneal’s first, bringing a slice of Victorian culture vividly to life. While The Doll Factory steeped the reader in the London of the Pre-raphaelite Brotherhood and the Great Exhibition, Circus of Wonders captures a golden age of showmen and spectacle. While the central characters are again fictional, the public appetite for the show is very real. Famous performers and showmen such as 1840s celebrity Tom Thumb and circus impresario PT Barnum are mentioned frequently.
The initial idea struck when Macneal came across a photograph of an unidentified bearded woman. “The name had been smudged and lost to time, and I just became completely fascinated.”
At first, she wanted to focus on people like this, rather than circus owners. Despite his all-singing, all-dancing depiction in The Greatest
Showman, like many of his peers PT Barnum exploited the people who made up his acts. “I thought it was such an important piece of history which has been forgotten or mis told, or it’s been the voice of the showman that has endured – PT Barnum, rather than those who were in his care – and I use the word ‘care’ very loosely.”
But after trying to write solely from the perspective of Nell, Macneal realised she needed multiple voices to explore the subject properly. The result is a book which splits the narrative between Nell, the showman Jasper Jupiter and his brother Toby. “I was interested in the idea of storytelling, and bias and truth. There are so many of those themes through the book, whether that’s propaganda about the Crimean War, or whether that’s Jasper’s fabricated stories about Nell.”
Like the protagonist of The Doll Factory, who escapes an unfulfilling life by falling in with artists and becoming an artist herself, Nell finds her own kind of agency through the subversive world of the circus. I can’t help but wonder if there’s an echo of Macneal’s own experience in both stories – she previously worked in the City before becoming a successful potter and now writer.
She thinks it’s a little broader than that. “It’s a rags-to-riches tale. I think novelists are very interested in changes of circumstances and what that can lead people to do.
“But certainly in both books, that kind of discontentment – the feeling that you’re living the life you’re supposed to, but it falls short in some way – I suppose you could say that was my office job.”
That was several years ago, and in the present moment, she tells me she is brimming with creativity. “The more history I read, the more I want to explore those little fragments and flyaway footnotes.”