Book Review - Laura Purcell's The Poison Thread
The Poison Thread by Laura Purcell
Published by: Penguin Books
Publication Date: June 18th, 2019
Format: Paperback, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy
Dorothea Truelove is a wealthy young woman. And wealthy young women need something to occupy themselves. Yes, she could marry, but her father would never approve of the policeman who has stolen her heart so she has turned to charitable works. And while visiting female prison inmates might be considered a normal outlet for someone of her class, her reasoning is more unnatural. She has taken up an interest in phrenology and wants to study the head of a murderer. Which is how she comes across Ruth Butterham at Oakgate Prison. The young seamstress doesn't deny she's a murderer, she just claims that her method of delivery is unintentional and otherworldly. She believes the items she sews are imbued with her emotions and that those emotions go on to kill those who wear her wares. She begs Dorothea to listen so that she will see she isn't insane. Her tale is a dark one. Her mother was from affluence and ran away with her father, a painter. But as time wore on they fell farther and farther down the social ladder. Ruth helped her mother with sewing she took in and it turned out she had an aptitude for it. After her father died they could no longer go on as they were and Ruth was indentured to a Mrs. Metyard. Ruth might have been better off on the streets with her mother the way she is treated by Mrs. Metyard and her daughter. The punishments were brutal and deadly. But Ruth had noticed something. Anyone whose clothes she had worked on had an ill will befall them. Little accidents and injuries. So she started to put her grievances into her labors and then there was a death. One of her classmates from her old life. They believe it was the dye from the fabric, a beautiful arsenic green. But Ruth knows better. Because this wasn't the only death. Dorothea doesn't believe Ruth's story. Besides being beyond the pale, she doesn't have the right shape of skull to be a killer. But then Ruth is forced to do some mending for the prison and illness breaks out. Could she really be telling the truth? Or is this just a poor misguided young girl whose life was stolen by circumstance?
The Poison Thread threads the needle (see what I did there) between the plausible and the supernatural, which is what Laura Purcell specializes in. Having only read The Silent Companions when I picked up this book I was slightly bemused and baffled that it handled the ending in such a similar manner. Through the whole book Purcell never spells it out if there is actually supernatural elements at play until the last few pages where the supernatural is confirmed and the book just ends. So ended The Silent Companions so ended The Poison Thread. I was worried that all her books would end in this kind of cliched manner. It almost feels like a cop out. Because admitting the existence of the supernatural and then not leaving room to explain how after all the why leading up to it makes the book somehow less than. But thankfully she has seemed to grow out of this from my further reading. And the truth is, this abrupt ending doesn't take away from this book the way it did in The Silent Companions. It just is. Or perhaps I was just prepared if it happened again... What set this book apart from other Victorian female prison fare, and yes, there are others, I'm looking at you Affinity, is the craft of Ruth Butterham. Ruth believes she has the supernatural ability to kill with her sewing. That her emotions transfer to the clothes she is working on. I totally buy this. Why you might ask? Well, as a maker, from artwork to theatre productions to clothing, I look at something I've made and I'm travelling into my past. My old work effects me when I see it, emotions, thoughts, what was happening in my life comes back to me, and I have wondered, what if that was visible to others? What if what I put in actually remains and then that would effect someone else? Could they feel the late night struggle on a seam? Could the joy I felt at burning something be tangible to another? That what if is what drives Ruth's belief. And maybe that is why I was fine with the ending, because I bought into the premise. I had wondered about my own work so it would obviously be possible for another artist to feel the same. It's logical, not necessarily supernatural.
Post a Comment