Melmoth

Haunted by past misdeeds, a self-exiled English translator encounters the uncanny in snow-covered Prague.Helen Franklin doesn't deserve joy, so she arranges her own "rituals of discomfort: the uncovered mattress, the unheated room, the bitter tea," the modern-day equivalents of wearing a hair shirt. When one of her few friends, the scholar Karel Praan, stops her on the street to share his discovery of a strange manuscript, Helen begins to suspect her past has caught up with her at last. The manuscript contains tales from many sources, and they all detail horrors in various degrees: a young Austrian boy who gets his neighbors sent to concentration camps during World War II, a 16th-century Protestant in Tudor England striving to retain her faith in the face of persecution, a 19th-century Turkish bureaucrat responsible for writing a memo used to justify the detention of Armenian families. In each of these tales lurks the spectral figure of Melmoth, a witness "cursed to wander the earth without home or respite, until Christ comes again." But why does steady, practical Helen Franklin feel Melmoth's "cold gaze passing at the nape of her neck"--and what misdeeds from her past have pushed her to the brink of exhaustion? While Helen's friends--the sharp, wry Thea, a former barrister, the cranky landlord Albína, and the saintly Adaya--worry, the beseeching hand of Melmoth grows ever closer. In rich, lyrical prose, Perry (The Essex Serpent, 2017, etc.) weaves history and myth, human frailty and compassion, into an affecting gothic morality tale for 2018. Like David Mitchell and Sarah Waters, Perry is changing what a modern-day ghost story can look like, challenging her readers to confront the realities of worldwide suffering from which fiction is so often an escape.A chilling novel about confronting our complicity in past atrocities--and retaining the strength and moral courage to strive for the future.

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Starred review from August 13, 2018
Loosely inspired by Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel, Melmoth the Wanderer, the successor to Perry’s 2016 novel, The Essex Serpent, is an unforgettable achievement. At 42, British-born translator Helen Franklin lives in Prague, denying herself love and pleasure to atone for an unnamed wrong she committed 20 years before. In December 2016, she has a disturbing encounter with her friend, university professor Karel Pražan, during which Karel clutches a leather file and speaks wildly of Melmoth, a specter that folktales claim was among the women who glimpsed the risen Christ. After denying her sight of God, she was cursed to wander forever, seeking out the wicked in the hopes that bearing witness will win her salvation. When Karel suddenly disappears, Helen delves into his file, which chronicles Melmoth’s appearances to individuals culpable of individual or collective acts of cruelty. Soon, she too is haunted by a shadowy figure and drawn inexorably toward a reckoning with her past. Though rich in gothic tropes and sinister atmosphere, the novel transcends pastiche. Perry’s heartbreaking, horrifying monster confronts the characters not just with the uncanny but also with the human: with humanity’s complicity in history’s darkest moments, its capacity for guilt, its power of witness, and its longing for both companionship and redemption.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
Like the Wandering Jew, Perry's nightmarish Melmoth the Witness ranges the earth recording horrors wrought by humankind. She watches and tracks individuals (who feel hairs prick on their neck and search the shadows for visions) whose sins cannot be forgiven, upon whom she preys with flashes of magical realism, recalling the imagery in Perry's The Essex Serpent? (2017). The nonlinear time line of historical events and the nested stories involving wide-ranging and complex characters may sometimes make readers feel uneasy or even lost. But once we gain our sea legs, this stylized, postmodern work by a masterly writer compels us to see genocide, war, deportation, and even compassionate deadly crimes through new eyes that reflect the characters' perspectives. Helen Franklin is a young British woman working as a translator in Prague, where she and her new friends, Karel and Thea, discover a shocking document describing the wanderings of the mythical Melmoth. Later, after reading the unforgettable horrors detailed in the document, Helen breaks down, seemingly unable to withstand the starkly upsetting images, thrumming inevitability of remembrance, and the guilt we all share in some way. This is a sobering, disturbing, yet powerful and moving book that cannot fail to impress. The stories-within-stories and the Jewish themes recall Dara Horn's The World to Come (2006) and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (2013), although Melmoth presents different kinds of nightmares.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from September 1, 2018

Having summoned a squiggly, writhing creature in her critically acclaimed The Essex Serpent, Perry conjures a different kind of monster, Melmoth, an ancient roving crone, dressed in black, and trailing whiffs of death and destruction. Helen Franklin is an English nonentity of a certain age residing in Prague. She happens on a musty manuscript setting out Melmoth's story. What could possibly link Helen with the monster? As with many monsters, Melmoth is cobbled from bits and bobs. There is Charles Maturin's 1820 classic gothic tale, Melmoth the Wanderer, traces of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, hints of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and "The Birds," and a large helping of original Perry. The author transforms the central figure from a male traveler into a female gazer, with looks that can kill. VERDICT This is a dusty mansion, with small manuscript-filled rooms, creaky stairs, multiple twists and turns, and loads of angst. For readers who favor ghost stories as bedtime reading, this fever dream of a novel will prove as compelling and all-consuming as The Essex Serpent. [See Prepub Alert, 4/23/18.]--Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2018

Following the internationally best-selling The Essex Serpent, which made lots of Best and Notable lists, Perry crafts a literary gothic that opens in Prague, where Englishwoman Helen Franklin works as a translator. She and friend Karel discover a letter referencing Melmoth the Witness, a little-known folkloric figure who wanders through time, enticing malcontents to join her lonely walk. Is Melmoth real? Is she watching Helen? Why has Karel vanished? With a 100,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.