Book Review: "Melmoth" by Sarah Perry

“This melancholy company is curiously consoling. It is restful to be exempted from the obligation to find, in every spire and pinnacle of the mother of cities, reason to wonder and delight.”

- Melmoth by Sarah Perry

When it comes to Sarah Perry, I think we can all say that The Essex Serpent was her magnum opus. Since then, she has had a rickety ride through the realm of historical fiction and the gothic. Melmoth is no different to that. I think that I am surprised most at how much this book does not actually showcase her talents, but instead turns into a low drawl almost - a book with no centre or climactic point and instead leads you through several stories all trying to do the same thing.

Helen Franklin goes to meet a friend of her’s named Karel and he is gaunt and looking not quite himself. He states that he has a manuscript featuring many places and times over the course of a few centuries. It is about someone called Melmoth. Melmoth is a woman dressed entirely in black who has come to deliver a very clear message to humanity about the failings and losses of being human.

First of all, I think the author could have done more with the storyline. In Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer we feel a real sense of dread creeping around as we read the book to the point that you might want to sleep with the lights on. However, in Perry's book there is no real deep exploration into the character of Melmoth. It is far too focused on telling us story after story of different characters rather than actually giving us anything that would constitute as gothic horror. This in turn, makes the book a fairly bland read.

Another thing about this book that bothered me was the fact that the characters are wholly uninteresting. I'm sorry but Helen Franklin is a character that I feel has no personality whatsoever and yet she is the main character of the book. There are other characters as well such as Thea, who's entire personality is dependent on the fact that she had a stroke. I'm not saying it is not important, I'm just saying that there are so many characters packed into such a short book that there really was not a chance to explore anyone in any depth.

When Karel disappears there is a realisation in the book of what might have happened to him. However, this is literally just skimmed over and referenced every now and again until the (fairly cliché) ending. I feel like Karel's disappearance should have been much bigger than it was. Sarah Perry didn't really have anyone explore into where he might have gone or what he might be doing. Given the fact that this book is set in 2017, it would be very difficult to disappear in a city without the authorities at least trying to look for you. I felt a little bit conned out of a good story there.

I think this book's main issue is that it is too short for what it is. At only a mere 271 pages, this book tries to cram in letters, manuscripts, confessions etc. all into a story about Helen Franklin learning about Melmoth. I felt like I would need at least 400 pages to get into all these little stories going on and even when it comes to Karel's dissapearance, I feel like the references to it were thrown in any time the author remembered that he'd disappearead. It was much too short to cover everything in any detail and ended up being a surface layer of what could have been. It is more like the outline for a plot rather than the novel itself.

All in all, though some of the descriptions are very beautifully written, I think Sarah Perry let us down a little bit here because for those of us who have read Melmoth the Wanderer, I think we were expecting something more chilling and frightening rather than what essentially is a historical adventure novel. To me, this book is too light and bland to be a gothic horror or even a ghost story. I have to say I am disappointed with an author who is supposed to deliver on quality writing something so empty and subpar.