Birdcage Walk

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Birdcage Walk

Title:

Birdcage Walk

Author:

Dunmore, Helen

Subject:

Literary

Fiction

Historical

Description:

It is 1792, and Europe is seized by political unrest. In England, Lizzie Fawkes has grown up among Radicals who've followed the French Revolution with eager optimism. But Lizzie has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. As the strain of financial setbacks and the secrets of his past converge upon him, his grip on what he considers his rightful property-including Lizzie-only grows tighter...From an Orange Prize winner and Whitbread Award finalist, this is a novel with a "charged radiance" (The New York Times) that explores romanticism and disillusionment, terror and love, and the dangerous lines between them.

Publisher:

Grove Atlantic

Date:

2017-08-01

Summary

Revolutionary turmoil in France threatens to cross the English border--and tear apart an increasingly tense marriage--in this "brilliant" gothic thriller ( Publishers Weekly , starred review). It is 1792, and Europe is seized by political unrest. In England, Lizzie Fawkes has grown up among Radicals who've followed the French Revolution with eager optimism. But Lizzie has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. As the strain of financial setbacks and the secrets of his past converge upon him, his grip on what he considers his rightful property--including Lizzie--only grows tighter...From an Orange Prize winner and Whitbread Award finalist, this is a novel with a "charged radiance" ( The New York Times ) that explores romanticism and disillusionment, terror and love, and the dangerous lines between them."Dunmore knows how to let a narrative move like an arrow in flight...A man rows from Bristol to a glade where he has left his dead wife overnight. He must bury her fast, where no one will find her. From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller as we keep company with John Diner Tredevant, an 18th-century property developer building a magnificent terrace in Clifton, high above the Avon Gorge. Lizzie, his second wife, does not know the details of what happened to his first. Nor do we know as much as we might suppose...The novel's cast is marvelous and vivid."-- The Guardian "Explores the impact of the French Revolution on 1790s England within the context of a gothic romance set in Bristol...[a] magnificently complex villain."-- Kirkus Reviews

Author Notes

Helen Dunmore was born in Beverley, England on December 12, 1952. She received a degree in English from the University of York in 1973. She taught English in Finland before moving to Bristol, England, where she taught literature and creative writing. She was a poet, novelist, and children's author. Her collections of poetry include The Apple Fall, The Raw Garden, and Inside the Wave. Her books include Talking to the Dead, Your Blue-Eyed Boy, House of Orphans, The Greatcoat, The Siege, The Betrayal, The Lie, and Birdcage Walk. She won the McKitterick Prize for debut novelists in 1994 for Zennor in Darkness, the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996 for A Spell of Winter, and the Costa Award for Poetry in 2017 for Inside the Wave. She died of cancer on June 5, 2017 at the age of 64.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

This brilliant novel from the late Dunmore addresses the very issues with which all authors must grapple: What does one leave behind as a writer? What is the mark writers leave upon time? The layered story begins with a man coming across the 18th-century headstone of Julia Elizabeth Fawkes, inscribed, "Her Words Remain Our Inheritance." But no record of her writing survives. Dunmore then leads the reader back 200 years to the cover-up of a murder, and then to Lizzy Fawkes Tredevant-daughter of the aforementioned Julia, raised among radicals in the English city of Bristol during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution. The willful Lizzy has married John Diner Tredevant, an ambitious builder with a dark past, who is hostile to the new political ideas making their way to England from Paris, ideas he believes may destroy his business prospects. He also resents Lizzy's susceptibility to the influence of her mother and Julia's entourage of English radicals. Lizzy and her mother are very close; when tragedy visits Julia's household, Lizzy is left with an enormous responsibility. As the revolution in France comes to its frenzied zenith, Tredevant's creditors balk, and his project for a terrace of houses in Bristol collapses. As her husband's debts overwhelm them, Lizzy's very life is threatened and John unravels into desperation. Dunmore has left readers with memorable, fascinating characters, both historical and fictional, "whose struggles and passions have been hidden from history.... But even so, did they not shape the future?" Agent: Caradoc King, United Agents. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Historical atmosphere and characterization are top-notch in Dunmore's (Exposure, 2016) newest work of literary historical fiction. Although there's little action, considerable tension develops as Lizzie Fawkes awakens to the truth about the man she married and his first wife's fate details that readers know from the start. The setting is 1790s Bristol, England. Revolution is erupting in Europe, and Lizzie's mother, Julia Fawkes, a writer who attacked the majesty of kings, belongs to a group of radicals eagerly watching their beliefs take form in nearby France. Lizzie's husband, building-developer Diner Tredevant, knows that war will crush his ambitions to build a terrace high above the Avon Gorge. Diner has always resented Lizzie's family and their free-thinking ways, and as money grows tight, Diner's controlling behavior and paranoia become evident. The graveyard scene from the novel's modern-day prelude isn't picked up again but pays homage to the many women's lives lost to history. Knowledge of Dunmore's 2017 passing, added to her theme of the legacies people leave, lends a sad poignancy to the reading experience.--Johnson, Sarah Copyright 2017 Booklist

Library Journal Review

Although she does not subscribe to her mother's radical politics, Lizzie Fawkes Tredevant, daughter of a feminist pamphleteer and accustomed to changing lodgings in a hurry, is a free and independent spirit raised in a closely knit all-female household in 1792 England. Her passion for Diner Tredevant, the brilliant Bristol developer and builder, leads to a marriage that has her comparing his practical skills with the revolutionary rhetoric of her mother's circle, a rhetoric that has dangerous and unforeseen consequences as the Reign of Terror emerges from the populist rebellion of the French Revolution, and the fight for the civil rights of all turns into a brutal bloodbath. As Paris descends into madness, Lizzie discovers the darker side of her husband's obsessive love in a chilling tale of murder and politics. VERDICT After Exposure, Orange Prize winner Dunmore's final novel (the author died in June) is a gripping psychological mystery set in a compellingly portrayed period of exhilaration and unrest. [See Prepub Alert, 5/15/17.]-Cynthia Johnson, formerly with Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

It was past nine o'clock now and he was still absent. Sarah and Philo had gone to their attic, while I sat by the fire, in a good light, with my work. I was making a shirt for him. He didn't like to see me sewing when we were together--I should send the work out, he said--but he would change his mind when he put on the shirt. The linen was fine and I had measured him exactly. There were gussets under the arms so that he could stretch and move freely, as he had to. I sewed well and quickly, and my eyes were strong. I intended to make him half a dozen shirts, with his initials embroidered into the hems. He would pay four times as much for shirts of this quality from a tailor. We ought to have saved money, and lived in rooms. I knew that Diner had sunk a great deal of money in the building of the terrace. The whole of his capital, I suspected, and he had borrowed many times more. The profit, he said, would come once all the houses were sold. The two large houses at each end of the terrace would have elegant columns and fine detailing in the stonework. The architect, Mr Fellingbourne, had designed the terrace so that these end houses would be more than twice the width of ours. They would not only be splendid, but they would have all the latest conveniences. A cold plunge bath was to be installed in the basement of each of the end houses, to attract the wealthiest and most discerning purchasers. But first, there must be foundations. Excerpted from Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.