The Doll Factory

Elizabeth Macneal

Pan Macmillan

Otago Daily Times, July 20th 2019

Like Jess Kid’s Things in Jars (reviewed elsewhere), The Doll Factory is set against a background of Victorian London. The narrative tapestry Macneal weaves from these common threads is as suspenseful as Kidd’s, but hers is a far more serious tale that cleaves much more closely to reality.

Twenty-one-year-old Iris Whittle and her twin sister, Rose, have thankless but respectable work making bespoke dolls for wealthy clients. Disfigured by smallpox and disappointed in love, Rose is resigned to a lifetime of drudgery. The rebellious Iris,  however, dreams of painting portraits rather than porcelain, and when asked to model for Louis Frost, a (fictional) member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, she accepts on the condition that he teach her art. Although disowned by her family, she soon finds her place in the Brotherhood’s chaotic studio, and her relationship with Louis soon progresses well beyond the bounds of propriety. But Louis is not the only man whose interest Iris has piqued; after a brief encounter in Hyde Park, a reclusive taxidermist and collector of curiosities, Silas Reid has constructed an elaborate fantasy in which the two of them are destined for one another and is determined to earn her affections no matter what.

Set in the months leading up to the Great Exhibition of 1850, Macneal’s London is realistically gritty and squalid. Although its main protagonists are fictional, many of the details, including the broader membership of the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood (including other model/mistress/artists such as Elizabeth Siddal)  and the critical responses of Dickens and Ruskin to their work, is firmly grounded in fact.

What really sets The Doll Factory apart from the run-of-the-mill historical novel is its nominal villain, Silas. Whereas Iris, Louis and Archie, the street-urchin who links the main protagonists and plots, are broad stereotypes, Silas is a complex and pitiable character; a lonely and obsessive man who has built his life around a series of elaborate fantasies that blind him to the immorality and brutality of his own actions right up until the story’s shocking denouement. Dramatic, evocative and beautifully paced, Macneal’s impressive debut will hold your attention to the very last page.