Melmoth

Sarah Perry’s third novel teeters “right on the edge of being too much,” said Constance Grady in Vox.com. In contemporary Prague, a meek translator is handed a transcript about a female figure who has been witness to humanity’s worst crimes, and she comes to fear that Melmoth has returned to judge her for her own transgressions. Good for Perry, the author of The Essex Serpent: “Restrained novels are a dime a dozen, but weirdo over-the-top quasi-Victorian gothic fantasies about sin are rarer birds.”