Still, Melmoth has a frigid beauty that you can turn over and over in admiration (its physical design is also wonderful). The plot unfolds Helen’s research into forbidden knowledge too close to formula, however, and in the strong supporting narratives, an over-reliance on the same visual motifs detracts from the writing’s effect (so many jewels “dripping” and staring jackdaws). The result is a unique contribution to the folk horror genre, whose strength comes from its ethereal, compelling description.
For Melmoth watches all and offers her hand only to those most like her-the lonely and the unforgiven.Īfter Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent and its study in communal panic, Melmoth is Perry’s portrayal of a much more solitary, internal fear. It seems that Perry affected me on a deeper level than I realised.
Again, I wasn’t entirely sure if the central message crystallised completely, but I ended the story in tears which surprised me. They all remind her of the single sin she has been trying to repent. Melmoth, the mythical wanderer, bears witness to sins so there are some very dark moments in the novel as well as redemption. After Karel disappears, the guilty words he found-of a German boy complicit in the occupation of Prague, an English Protestant condemned to die, a Turkish bureaucrat with a sharpened pen-weigh on Helen. Karel collates a collection of historical documents after an odd acquaintance bequeaths his own chilling account of Melmoth the Witness. Her only friends are an academic couple, Karel and Thea, but the warm respite they provide is soon disrupted.
In shadowed Prague, Helen Franklin lives in a self-imposed exile and works as a translator.
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