Viper Wine

February 16, 2015
Set in 1630s England, a country heading for civil war, Eyre’s confident debut novel expertly combines historical fact with modern-day invention. Sir Kenelm Digby is an alchemist, a man at the crossroads of magic and science; in Eyre’s imagination, “sometimes his mind was double hinged, and could go forward as well as back.” Eyre’s narrative includes anachronistic imaginings of the future: microscopes, Fermat’s Theorem, binary code, and even Barbara Streisand. Digby’s wife, Venetia, desperate to regain her youthful beauty, imbibes Viper Wine, an illicit concoction whose ingredients include snake venom and the urine of pregnant mares. Although Venetia is gratified by the results, the drink renders her face largely immovable, the 17th-century equivalent of Botox. Parallels with the 21st century abound, as women are “misled, traduced, deluded” into cosmetic procedures and “always forced by their pride to lie and say they pinched not, they painted not” and that “everyone pretended to believe them... laughing as soon as they turned their back.” Eyre’s novel, darting as it does through centuries, is an engrossing take on a timeless subject.

February 1, 2015
British journalist Eyre makes her fiction debut with the tale of a 17th-century beauty's dangerous quest for eternal youth.Venetia Stanley and her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, are actual historical figures, as are Antoon Van Dyck, Ben Jonson and a host of others from across the centuries who caper through Eyre's postmodern mashup. Andy Warhol discerns unhappiness in Van Dyck's portrait of the couple; supermodel Naomi Campbell is among those whose cautionary tales of disastrous beauty treatments lead Kenelm, deeply steeped in the mysteries of alchemy, to deny his beloved wife's request that he mix her a potion to restore her youthful freshness. So instead she goes to Lancelot Choice, whose Viper Wine soon bleaches away her age spots and plumps up her skin. But the potion is dangerously addictive and leads Venetia to new treatments that leave her face grotesquely swollen, its muscles almost immobilized. The allusion to Botox is clearly intentional, as are a flock of ghostly comments heard by Kenelm toward the end that suggest women through the ages are obsessed with their looks. Dressing up this less-than-breathtaking insight with the jarring spectacle of Kenelm quoting David Bowie and Neil Armstrong is not very plausibly justified by the revelation that "to [Kenelm], time was circular, and alchemical Wisdom was a golden chain." Eyre has clearly done a great deal of research, but it's mostly employed in eye-crossingly dull passages detailing Kenelm's esoteric studies. There are some sharply drawn characters, but too many of them are like the earthy Mary Tree, who strides into the story with promising vigor only to meander in and out of the increasingly self-indulgent narrative until she's finally shoehorned in one last time to make the author's very obvious final point. A promising idea swamped by the excesses of postmodernism: the random plundering of history and an irritating air of knowingness.

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November 15, 2014

Muse to Ben Johnson and Van Dyck, Venetia Stanley fears that her celebrated beauty is fading. But though her husband, Sir Kenelm Digby, is an alchemist as well as an explorer and a time traveler, he won't brew her the vivifying potion he doesn't think she needs. Meanwhile, the ladies at the court of Charles I are drinking something vivifying called viper wine. Written in heightened, twisty-magical language and receiving raves in the UK, where Eyre is a well-known journalist; with a 30,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2015

At the ripe age of 32, Lady Venetia Digby is worried that she is losing her famous looks. The Princess Diana of her day and the wife of Sir Kenelm Digby, she was celebrated in poetry by John Donne and Ben Jonson and in paintings by Anthony van Dyck. Her adoring husband, an apothecary, adventurer, and bibliomaniac, famous for his scientific discoveries and his recipes (a posthumous cookbook attributes bacon and eggs to him) suggests a remedy of snail slime to restore her youthful beauty and forbids her to seek treatment elsewhere. In secret, she searches out a practitioner who dispenses a restorative tonic made of viper innards mixed with wine and opium. Alas, this botoxlike concoction proves both addictive and dangerous--for her and for many ladies at the court of Charles I. VERDICT With contemporary people and events--Groucho Marx and Andy Warhol, global warming and stem-cell research--oddly popping into the 1600s landscape, this debut novel presents a fascinating glimpse into how artists and poets once worked (using assistants for the hard labor), how vain women sought out the promise of youth, and how little has changed from that time to this. A fact-filled fiction that entertains and enlightens. [See Prepub Alert, 10/27/14.]--Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.