A Dark Dividing by
Sarah Rayne
pbk out August 04
(Simon Schuster)
at £10.99
Sarah Rayne's previous novel, Tower of Silence was characterised by some
reviewers as a first novel. Some of the unlikely coincidences in it were overlooked
because of the assumption that the author would grow in confidence. The overall
story warranted allowances being made. A Dark Dividing is the second by Rayne, but
her own website reveals Sarah Rayne as the pseudonym of an established UK author,
who has written for twenty years in horror and gothic fantasy genres. Not such a
newcomer, then.
When Harry Fitzglen is asked to write an article on the opening of a new art
gallery in Bloomsbury, he is not a happy man. It is being opened by socialite
Angelica Thorne, and Harry doesn't think it suites his image. But his editor,
Markovitch, has an ulterior motive for the assignment. The photographer being
previewed is Simone Anderson, one of previously conjoined twins. Markovitch wants
Harry to dig in the past and find out what happened to the mother, Melissa, and the
other twin. This assignment starts off a convoluted and strange journey for Harry.
The reader is drawn not only into the past of Simone and her mother, but the life of
Charlotte Quinton, Edwardian wife and mother of conjoined, or rather then, Siamese
twins.
The fate of Simone's conjoined sister is slowly revealed as we learn how their
father, aspiring politician Joe Anderson, reacted to the news of his children's state.
And how the surgeon, Martin Brannan, and one of the nurses at the clinic, Roz
Raffan, got deeply involved in the affair. All their lives and those of Charlotte
Quinton's chidren, revolve around the now derelict, and brooding Mortmain House.
Simone dreams of a sly and malevolent little girl, who draws her to Mortmain, and we
learn of evil acts that were perpetrated there in Victorian times, when orphaned
children were fated to end up as playthings for rich men.
Though some of the prose seems self-conscious, especially the journal sections
from the Edwardian lady, Charlotte, Rayne still manages to engage the reader. The
story switches from the distant past, through the recent past of the child Simone, and
her possession of the mysterious girl, to the present. Harry Fitzglen's infatuation with
Simone holds the story together as the various tendrils of the past twine around each
other like the choking ivy on the walls of the terrible Mortmain House. Unexpected
twists and turns emerge from the gloom of the house like fateful ghosts. The ultimate
convergence of the two stories about the two sets of conjoined twins may seem
contrived initially. But finally there is an inevitability about it that overcomes all
uncertainties. The connection of the story of the conjoined, but physically separated,
twins is skilfully concluded.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
A Dark Dividing by
Sarah Rayne
