Quite accidentally, What Empty Things Are These (hereafter known as WETAT!) coincided with the explosion of the MeToo movement - and it's a great fit. History with a Victorian voice and modern meaning.
WETAT is a literary historical novel, set in London of 1860. That was a time when there was nothing unusual in a man beating his wife. When George Hadley's aggression triggers his own stroke and coma, his wife discovers all she things of as hers is to pass to her young son Toby. Adelaide seems as powerless as her lady's maid, Sobriety.
Beyond the strictures of domestic and social expectation, these two women of different class remake the rules to discover what lies beneath the drapes and tassels of Victorian Britain. Life, they find, is urgent, exciting... but cheap. Even as they adventure into alleyways, a tunnel and a seance, their innocence is gone.
WETAT is about what happens to women who look into the face of this newly industrialised and still patriarchal age. Change is everywhere, exhilarating, corrupt, terrifying.
Fraud and farce abound. Spiritualists prey on the confused; women are encased in clothing that implies both modesty and sexuality; the powerful prey upon the weak. Adelaide and Sobriety, in their way, show us that every era has secrets that must be uncovered for real social progress.
But the truth of the age is encapsulated for them in the underlying tale of the vulnerable urchin girl, the nameless victim of this pitiless society.
*****
There you have it. Comments from other authors have included: 'What Empty Things Are These is an exquisite story of friendship across class, the realisation of self-worth, and the delicate emergence of female solidarity in the face of society's disdain. Crozier has created a glorious Victorian London that creaks and groans and gasps in its smoky, damp darkness and stifling corsetry. A stunning debut and a triumph of imagination and historical voice.' (Alison Goodman, NYT bestselling author of Eon, Eona and The Dark Days Club series.
and: 'Elegant, witty and sharply insightful, What Empty Things Are These is a mid-Victorian riff on the intellectual and actual freedom of women - that that cleverly begs the question of what has, and what hasn't, changed today.' (Kim Key author of Black Diamonds, This Red Earth, The Blue Mile, paper Daisies, Wild Chicory and Jewel Sea.
WETAT is available from my publisher: Regal House Publishing, from Amazon and is orderable from any bookshop. Enjoy!Judy Crozier
WETAT is a literary historical novel, set in London of 1860. That was a time when there was nothing unusual in a man beating his wife. When George Hadley's aggression triggers his own stroke and coma, his wife discovers all she things of as hers is to pass to her young son Toby. Adelaide seems as powerless as her lady's maid, Sobriety.
Beyond the strictures of domestic and social expectation, these two women of different class remake the rules to discover what lies beneath the drapes and tassels of Victorian Britain. Life, they find, is urgent, exciting... but cheap. Even as they adventure into alleyways, a tunnel and a seance, their innocence is gone.
WETAT is about what happens to women who look into the face of this newly industrialised and still patriarchal age. Change is everywhere, exhilarating, corrupt, terrifying.
Fraud and farce abound. Spiritualists prey on the confused; women are encased in clothing that implies both modesty and sexuality; the powerful prey upon the weak. Adelaide and Sobriety, in their way, show us that every era has secrets that must be uncovered for real social progress.
But the truth of the age is encapsulated for them in the underlying tale of the vulnerable urchin girl, the nameless victim of this pitiless society.
*****
There you have it. Comments from other authors have included: 'What Empty Things Are These is an exquisite story of friendship across class, the realisation of self-worth, and the delicate emergence of female solidarity in the face of society's disdain. Crozier has created a glorious Victorian London that creaks and groans and gasps in its smoky, damp darkness and stifling corsetry. A stunning debut and a triumph of imagination and historical voice.' (Alison Goodman, NYT bestselling author of Eon, Eona and The Dark Days Club series.
and: 'Elegant, witty and sharply insightful, What Empty Things Are These is a mid-Victorian riff on the intellectual and actual freedom of women - that that cleverly begs the question of what has, and what hasn't, changed today.' (Kim Key author of Black Diamonds, This Red Earth, The Blue Mile, paper Daisies, Wild Chicory and Jewel Sea.
WETAT is available from my publisher: Regal House Publishing, from Amazon and is orderable from any bookshop. Enjoy!Judy Crozier