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Poor things
episodes from the early life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish public health officer
First published 1992 · 408 pages
A darkly hilarious, feminist funhouse mirror held up to the Victorian gothic, where the monster is the most rational person in the room.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stumbling into a brilliantly curated cabinet of curiosities where nothing is quite as it seems. It is a wildly inventive, darkly comic romp through Victorian Glasgow and beyond, wrapped in the clever disguise of a found manuscript. The prose is a masterful pastiche of nineteenth-century scientific journals and breathless gothic melodrama, but beneath the eccentric typography and unreliable narrators beats a fiercely subversive, feminist heart. The mood is theatrical and uncanny, balancing grotesque medical horrors with laugh-out-loud satirical wit. It moves at a brisk, unpredictable clip, pulling you through a labyrinth of conflicting accounts. This is a feast for readers who delight in postmodern trickery, monstrous women claiming their agency, and stories that gleefully dismantle polite hypocrisies.
- Mood
- gothic
- bizarre
- darkly comic
- theatrical
- uncanny
- Tone
- satirical
- wry
- eccentric
- playful
- subversive
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- female autonomy · construction of identity · medical ethics · Victorian hypocrisy · sexual awakening
- The writing
- A masterful, multi-layered pastiche of 19th-century scientific and epistolary writing, complete with unreliable narrators, eccentric typography, and dark wit.
- The arc
- Moves from grotesque, morbid curiosity to a triumphant, subversive celebration of liberation and self-determination.
- Who it's for
- Readers who love postmodern trickery, feminist reimaginings of classic tropes, and darkly humorous Victorian gothic tales.
Content notes
- sexual content
- medical gore
- body horror
- suicide
- historical misogyny
About the book
A fantasy novel, presented as a discovered a manuscript, set in the nineteenth century. Frankenstein-like tale. Whitbread Novel Award, 1992.
Description from Open Library.
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