A Skinful of Shadows

Starred review from September 25, 2017
As the English Civil War gains momentum, a girl named Makepeace Lightfoot attempts to uncover the shadowy secrets of her family history after her mother is killed. To do so, she travels to Grizehayes, the ancestral home of the father she never knew, where she learns that the aristocratic Fellmottes are able to possess ghosts within them, bringing them preternatural knowledge and strength. Thanks to her Fellmotte lineage, Makepeace comes to harbor several spirits within her, and she takes on as many external personas—servant, spy, medic, prophet—as she attempts to escape (and eventually bring down) the Fellmottes, who see her little more than a vessel. Hardinge, whose The Lie Tree was the 2015 Costa Book of the Year, crafts a delicious combination of historical adventure, coming-of-age tale, and supernatural intrigue, set amid power struggles that reshaped 17th-century England. Makepeace’s evolving relationships with the ghosts embodied within her are fascinating and moving (differentiated fonts make these internal conversations easy to follow), highlighting her growing compassion despite being given few reasons to trust anyone in her young life. Ages 13–up.

October 15, 2017
In 17th-century England, a girl faces civil unrest, conflicting Christianities, and a family inheritance more horrific than she could have dreamed. Makepeace has nightmares, so Mother banishes her to an abandoned chapel to practice fighting off the dead people who are trying to enter her mind. Upon Mother's death, Makepeace is sent to the Fellmottes, family of the father she never knew. Grizehayes is a "graceless and vast" house, the wealthy family's "arrogance made stone....proof of their centuries." The Fellmottes treat her as a servant and prevent her escape: they need her as a spare receptacle for generations of family ghosts. But if Makepeace's body inherits the ghosts, her own consciousness may not survive. Doggedly ingenious and stolid, Makepeace grabs every scrap of agency she can find--even when ghosts do share her mind, invited or not, human or beast. She escapes Grizehayes, but the Fellmottes hunt her through city and countryside, through both sides of the unfolding English civil war, through the disguises she keeps changing. Powerlessness, poverty, and integrity are major themes, built on a subtle yet stubborn underlying warmth. Hardinge's plot is both unpredictable and rock-solid, her settings full of smells, her imagery vivid: "A shocked silence pooled like blood." All characters are white and English. Deliberate, impeccable, and extraordinary. (Historical fantasy. 12-15)

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Starred review from October 15, 2017
Grades 7-12 *Starred Review* In her first novel since The Lie Tree (2016), Hardinge again summons history and fantasy, intermingling them in a most unusual way. Set against a backdrop of the English Civil War, the story opens in a small Puritan village, where a girl named Makepeace wrestles with vivid nightmares. When her mother is accidentally killed, the girl is sent to her father's family, of whom she knows nothing. The Fellmottes, it turns out, are an old aristocratic clan with an insidious secretthey are able to house the spirits of the dead, a gift they have twisted, and the inherited cause of Makepeace's clawing nightmares. The narrative opens slowly as Hardinge lays deliberate groundwork and conjures a palpably eerie atmosphere, which mounts in horror as the story progresses. It picks up after Makepeace, now 15, has spent two years as a kitchen girl at the Fellmotte estate, gathering information about the family. The plot becomes populated by spymistresseswhose ranks Makepeace fleetingly joinsand vengeful spirits, and is punctuated by her escape attempts and wartime battles. Yet much of the action unfolds in Makepeace's head, as she acquires her own coterie of ghosts, most memorably that of an ill-treated bear. Hardinge's writing is stunning, and readers will be taken hostage by its intensity, fascinating developments, and the fierce, compassionate girl leading the charge.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)