Well the page 99 test was created by Ford Maddox Ford as a way to test the quality of a book you may want to read. Apparently page 99 is the point in the book where the author should have hit their stride and hopefully we’re not so far in we hit spoilers
Grace Parkes has just had to do a terrible thing. Having given birth to
an illegitimate child, she has travelled to the famed Brookwood Cemetery to
place her small infant's body in a rich lady's coffin. Following the advice of
a kindly midwife, this is the only way that Grace can think of to give
something at least to the little baby who died at birth, and to avoid the
ignominy of a pauper's grave. Distraught and weeping, Grace meets two people at
the cemetery: Mrs Emmeline Unwin and Mr James Solent. These two characters will
have a profound affect upon Grace's life. But Grace doesn't know that yet. For
now, she has to suppress her grief and get on with the business of living:
scraping together enough pennies selling watercress for rent and food; looking
after her older sister, who is incapable of caring for herself; thwarting the
manipulative and conscience-free Unwin family, who are as capable of running a
lucrative funeral business as they are of defrauding a young woman of her
fortune. A stunning evocation of life in Victorian London, with vivid and
accurate depictions, ranging from the deprivation that the truly poor suffered
to the unthinking luxuries enjoyed by the rich: all bound up with a pacy and
thrilling plot, as Grace races to unravel the fraud about to be perpetrated
against her and her sister.
“The front
two reception rooms of the house were where relatives of the departed were
taken to choose what sort of farewell they intended to give their ones. One room
had an entire wall made up of squares of different coffin wood, plus examples
of brass and silver nameplates, while the other, larger room (painted a deep
and soothing red) was where they decided more delicate matters, such as type of
mattress, pillow and interlining was wanted for the coffin interior. An alcove
in this room served as a study and contained a substantial mahogany desk with
various brochures from which the bereaved could choose funeral flowers, marble
memorials, the type of procession and number of horses, what mutes and plumes
and palls to use and other essential items. Behind these two reception areas
were the various workrooms, a private parlour and a kitchen. A comforting fire
burned in the red room summer and winter, and this perhaps calmed the mourners
and the shock of finding out how much the funeral was going to cost.”
Okay, so let’s start with the synopsis: the
synopsis tells a story of hardship in Victorian times. The reason I bought this
was the blurb. The Victorian era is one of my favourite historical times and I
love books from that time. The thing that really intrigued me was that some of
the topics felt relevant to how things are today.
The cover: the cover is So beautiful, from the font
to the girl’s hair, I adore it! It’s simplistic but so striking. There are a
couple of different textures and I can see why I was intrigued enough to read
what was inside the cover (I have a hardback). The fact that the background is
grey is something else I want to point out, normally I love colours, they draw
me in and make me excited, but the grey is perfect, it makes the stand out
point the girl’s hair (have I mentioned I like it? I wish my hair was that
pretty and I bet I’m not alone.)
The paragraph: The paragraph is a really stunning
piece of description, the words conjuring a bleak vision of the effects of
death on those left behind. I won’t lie as I was reading the paragraph and
again as I typed it I was envisioning the scene perfectly in my head, the only
thing missing was my narrator. Maybe that could be a positive though, there was
no filter between me and the world. I was at the centre of the room, instead of
floating above looking down at the event.
What do you guys think of the sound of Fallen Grace?
Let me know in the comments!
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