The Butcher's Hook

November 14, 2016
Set in 1763 London, Ellis’s debut novel confronts the darker aspects of femininity through the life of wealthy and sheltered Anne Jaccob. Even though her parents have handpicked a suitable husband for her, Anne chafes against the idea of a traditional marriage and finds herself jaded toward love after the death of her younger brother and her mother’s failed pregnancies. Despite Anne’s aloofness about her own future, she becomes infatuated with a butcher’s apprentice, Fub. Subverting her father’s wishes that she marry an older business associate of his who repulses her, Anne begins a secret romance with Fub. Their surreptitious encounters and the exhilaration the secret relationship inspires Anne’s darker nature to bloom. Ellis’s compelling plot rests on Anne’s formative sexuality and constantly returns to differing conceptions of love and the lengths people go to in order to protect their status and reputation. The unwillingness of anyone in the story to view Anne as more emotionally complicated than a child leads her self-discovery to run amok, and Ellis to explore the stifling effects of such repressive views of sexuality. Ellis’s use of vivid imagery and focus on grisly detail add a macabre beauty to a stirring story.

October 15, 2016
In an isolated manor on the outskirts of London in 1763, 19-year-old Anne Jaccob has reached the end of hope. What can come after but revenge?British television presenter and debut novelist Ellis conjures a dark, grimy world rife with thwarted desires and relentless death. With a keen eye for tortured reasoning and twisted motivations, Ellis draws bewitchingly disturbed souls. Indeed, Anne is surrounded by characters who foster seeds of anger deep in her soul: her mother, exhausted by multiple, mostly fruitless pregnancies, has shown her the hopelessness of breeding. Her father, embittered at the loss of his only son, finds endless fault with everything from the meat on the table to Anne herself. Worse, he arranged for the leering Dr. Edwards to tutor the intelligent Anne. Yet Dr. Edwards breached that trust and quashed Anne's natural curiosity about the world when he took her small, 9-year-old hand and opened his breeches. Together her unfortunate parents have selected the simpering, odious Simeon Onions to court her. Yet a chance encounter with Fub, the butcher's apprentice, who's more formally known as Frederick Warners, sparks new life within Anne. Soon she has not only forsaken social propriety to roam the streets in search of Fub but also tumbled headlong into a passionate affair with him. Ellis, however, masterfully tightens a web around Anne as the spiders of Dr. Edwards and Simeon Onions catch news of Anne and Fub's affair, seeing opportunities for blackmail. To Anne's further consternation, Fub himself disappoints her. They have all, of course, mistaken Anne for a malleable girl. She has become, instead, a venomous creature herself, a Georgian Fury, and the course of her revenge is delightfully horrific. Cinderella turns the tables in this gruesome yet engrossing fairy tale that begs for a sequel.

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November 1, 2016

Largely ignored by the entire household and still mourning the death of the only person she loved, her infant brother, wealthy merchant's daughter Anne Jacob is an outcast at the fringes of a family. She has no particular or meaningful connections to the outside world until she meets Fub, the butcher's apprentice. It's no wonder that this lonely young woman on the brink of discovering her burgeoning sexuality is instantly obsessed with the handsome, swaggering man. Lust, coupled with the threat of a forced marriage to one of her father's friends, makes Anne bold; even as the world is closing in on her, she makes a dramatic bid for freedom that will leave readers gasping. VERDICT In her first novel, Ellis weaves a darkly psychological tale set in the rough-and-tumble, vulgar, colorful London of Moll Flanders and Tom Jones. Evoking pity, abhorrence, admiration, and disgust, this title is strongly recommended for readers with a love of Georgian literature and Georgian London and those intrigued by the complexity of the human psyche.--Cynthia Johnson, formerly with Cary Memorial Lib., Lexington, MA

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2017

At first this title may seem like an oft-told tale-a poor little rich girl in Georgian England must marry an unappealing man, but she falls in love with someone beneath her station. However, the story goes deeper, and fast. As a child, Anne is taken advantage of by a teacher, leaving her with a skewed idea of the power of sex. Later in life, when Anne meets Fub, the butcher's apprentice, her sexuality is unleashed and she will let nothing stand in her way. She has no use for the unfortunately named Mr. Onions, who has been promised her hand in marriage; Margaret, Fub's intended; or even the aforementioned teacher. What begins as a bit of a slow burn turns horrifying as Anne becomes willing to do anything for Fub, even as she realizes he's not worth it. The heroine is amoral but not entirely unsympathetic. Debut novelist Ellis uses cunning turns of phrase ("He carried a great deal of his luncheon in his beard, and often it was not even the luncheon of the day, but of several days before."). Does Anne get her just deserts? That question would prompt a spicy book discussion. VERDICT Part horror, part historical fiction, this offering will appeal to those with darkly gothic tastes.-Jamie Watson, Baltimore County Public Library

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.