London,
circa 1888. A would-be nurse disfigured by
phosphorus. A dude with a head so big he
would snap his neck by lying down. An
infamous killer and the ghosts of his victims. Welcome to Matthew Kirby's 19th century. I was today years old when I realized this is the most aptly-named book I’ve met lately; a person
with a taste for monsters of any sort, spectral or alarmingly human or just misunderstood, is the
ideal reader here.
Our heroine Evelyn is homeless after losing her job in a
match factory. A match that will strike
anywhere was deemed worthy of a few missing jaws, and she is gobsmacked (pun
intended) with a rowdy case of phossy-jaw (phosphorus jaw). The doctor was able to save part of her
jawbone and some teeth, so she feels lucky.
The simple fact that *that* is considered lucky should tell you where
this is going. Just go with me when I say the condition is horrifying and it’s
unlikely she would be able to chew gum or stop scaring small children anytime
soon. I of course Googled the term and
promptly lost my appetite for several hours, but if you feel the need, go for
it.
She wears a shawl draped over part of her face and wants to
find somewhere to hide away so she can stop feeling like nightmare fuel. After scraping by on the streets for some
time, she’s off to London
Hospital to apply for a nursing
job. With no credentials and a face that
only a butterknife would love, it’s no surprise she is turned down. What is
surprising is the job she is offered – attendant to a special reclusive
patient. This is generally when people
say “uhhhh, no” but the jawless can’t be chewers – I mean choosers, sorry - and
Evelyn accepted. Her patient? Joseph
Merrick, also known as the Elephant Man. I presumed the matron’s idea was that
they will either accept each other as equally disturbing and be cool with the
arrangement, or they will feel even worse together and perhaps form a suicide
pact. Either way, he finally has someone
willing to come attend to him all day and she has a hiding place.
As you might expect, Evelyn sees this dude in various states
of undress and goes off her feed for a while, but eventually the two become
good friends. Just as things are getting
about as normal as you can get in this situation, strange apparitions start
popping up every night and scaring the living trunk off Joseph. Given that it’s the late summer and early
fall of 1888 in London,
it’s not hard to put two and two together in an alley with a uterus and see
Jack the Ripper’s handiwork. But why are
the ghosts throwing themselves at a shut-in who can’t even get around town? He
recruits Evelyn to help put the spirits to rest.
The reason I liked this book – despite some nauseating
descriptive bits – is that it does not just twirl around advising readers “look
beyond physical form because scary people are cool” with nothing substantial
underneath. That’s good advice but it’s
not exactly protein for a reader who loves historical fiction with ghosts and
mysteries.
A note: I confess I’m
a big fan of Ripper-related fiction and I loved that he was part of the story
without turning it into a gore-fest. If
you need the whole story to turn around him, give this a pass and try Mike
Resnick’s Redchapel.
If you’re cool with him being a large
piece of the kidney pie but not the whole pan, A Taste for Monsters should do
the trick.
