The Hourglass Factory

January 18, 2016
Ribchester’s energetic debut builds a quirky mystery around the 1912 suffrage demonstrations and hunger strikes in London, which authorities met with mass arrests, later force-feeding the prisoners. Aspiring journalist Francesca “Frankie” George, who wears men’s clothes and chafes at her lowly newspaper job, senses an opportunity for advancement when asked to profile trapeze artist and suffragette Ebony Diamond. Instead, she discovers two deaths that seem to be failed attacks on the acrobat shortly before Diamond suddenly disappears. Frankie’s quest for answers threatens her life and leads her to Frederick Primrose, a weary detective inspector at the Scotland Yard squad tasked with controlling the suffragettes’ constant disruptions. Their converging investigations wend through harrowing prisons, seedy variety shows, a suffrage leader’s office, and a corset shop that is more than it seems. The novel’s phantasmagoric world and complex themes, from gender and class inequity to the justifications for violent activism, are fascinating. But Ribchester fails to give her idiosyncratic characters or her story’s myriad elements (the Titanic, Jack the Ripper, fetishism, poison ivy, snake charming, and the Tarot, among other things) the full development they deserve, making the book feel overcrowded and emotionally flat despite its imaginative strength. Agent: David Forrer, Inkwell Management.

Starred review from January 15, 2016
Ribchester's debut: in shadowy 1912 London, an intrepid female reporter tries to interview a sexy, mysterious suffragette/trapeze artist only to be thrust into a complex intrigue involving corsets, bomb plots, and exotic dancers. Francesca "Frankie" George has fled marriage to the butcher's son to live her journalistic dream in the big city, but her editor only publishes the society column she writes each week with the input of Twinkle, an aging courtesan. When he asks her to interview the infamous Ebony Diamond, Frankie discovers that the beautiful trapeze artist and former suffragette has become the target of a murderer. Then Ebony disappears, and Frankie enlists help from Milly, an "Egyptian" dancer with her own snake; Liam, an errand boy; and, eventually, Inspector Frederick Primrose of the "suffragette squad." Soon they're confronting, in no particular order: militant suffragettes; a (possible) victim of Jack the Ripper; a secret club for powerful men who like to wear corsets; an escaped tiger; a man sent to prison for smashing windows; a militant moralist; a bomb plot to rival Guy Fawkes'; and Ebony herself, the shadow at the heart of all this drama. Ribchester leaves nothing out, no stone unturned and no drama unexplored, which is a big gamble, but the novel feels expertly paced and plotted. Despite all the drama, there are some very tender and slow unspoolings of character development and relationship, and these moments help anchor those more histrionic points. The characters complement one another brilliantly, and the novel actually brings some sharp insights to the history of the women's movement, its worth and its foibles, and the horrible realities of force-feedings and other jailhouse humiliations. How can one resist such a deliciously over-the-top, historically savvy novel? A romp with flair and substance.

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