Customer Reviews

The Alchemist's Daughter

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Part of what makes reading wonderful is that there can be divergent opinions of the same book; such is the case here, I'm surprised to say. Usually I find I agree with the majority in the reviews given here on Amazon, but not so in this case.

I find historical and period fiction are joys to read, particularly when plot and history combine with excellent research and writing talent to transport the reader to another time. With The Alchemist's Daughter, I felt that most of the pieces were in place for a winning read - the book was beautifully written, the research was deep and thoughtful. I expected a book of heft and intrigue, but was shocked to instead find a thinly-disguised romance novel with a plot that was both tiresome and predictable. I found the characters were mostly half-sketched, stereotypical, one-dimensional and dislikable to a fault. There were several points where I digustedly closed the book; though I did manage to reopen it and finish.

My gentle recommendation would be for those readers looking for historical fiction of a wee bit weightier variety to turn to The Other Boleyn Girl, The Crimson Petal and The White, Year of Wonders or any of Margaret George's fine books in lieu of this frothy, somewhat irritating eye-roller.

Unfortunately, a great many books are released each month, all clamouring (whether they merit it or not) for attention, so that it is rather easy for out of the ordinary gems to be missed. Such, sad to say, is the case of Katherine McMahon's "The Alchemist's Daughter." McMahon's novel was a fantastic and absorbing read -- I was absolutely riveted, and if you're looking for something fresh, and a little different from the usual, I'd really recommend you try "The Alchemist's Daughter" -- it's worth the hardcover price!

While Sir John Selden has spent a lot of time and effort on his only daughter's, Emilie, scientific education, he has, unfortunately, also brought her up in seclusion on his estate in Buckinghamshire. This, of course leaves Emilie vulnerable to the manipulations and influence of others. So that, when a dashing adventurer, Robert Aislabie, comes calling just around the time when Emilie's raging hormones are at their height (she's reached her seventeenth birthday), she finds herself quite vulnerable to Aislabie charms. Going against her father's wishes, Emilie insists on marrying Aislabie and leaves her father's home in order to live with her new husband in London. But, in spite of all its noise and liveliness, Emilie soon finds herself feeling out of place in London and with her husband's friends -- her wonderful education seems not to have prepared her for London's dazzling society. Intimidated and numbed by all she sees and is experiencing, it will be a while before Emilie removes the blinders from her eyes, realises who and what she is and so, become the woman her father always hoped she would be...

While one of the previous reviewers was correct to note that this was not a happy book, I did think that the novel ended on an uplifting note, full of hope and promise. This is a novel about personal growth and maturity, even if the growth didn't take place until the final chapters of the book. As such, it is quite possible for readers to grow impatient and irritated with Emilie. And while Emilie isn't the most engaging of heroines, I would argue that one should always remember that in spite of all her education, this is still a young teenager, who was brought up in seclusion and who had very little intercourse with society for most of her young life. That Emilie is always quick to blame others for the shortcomings in her life, her quickness to anger, and the fact that she moves about for much of the book in a kind of daze, allowing Aislabie to run her life is, completely understandable. Emilie definitely has blinders, and it will take the course of the book for them to come off and for her to finally act (instead of merely reacting) in order to undo some of the damage her indifference and anger has wrought.

I thought that "The Alchemist's Daughter" was a wonderful and worthwhile read. For me, the author successfully recaptured the feel and mood of the period; so that even though she didn't go in for overly luxurious and vivid descriptions, such was her prose style that I was able to "see" the dark and shabby rooms at Selden, the lush green of the estate, and the colour and opulence of the London drawing rooms. Also wonderfully done was her character portrayals -- especially those of Sir John Selden, the Reverend Shales and Robert Aislabie. More than any others, these characters defied stereotypes and leaped off the pages. Reading "The Alchemist's Daughter" was a pleasure and a treat -- much like the pleasure I had when I first discovered Charlotte Smith and Eliza Haywood, and it is a novel I'd recommend heartily for anyone interested in the historical novel genre.

This book is one of the most gothic I've ever read and it's done extremely well. I've always considered Jane Eyre to be the pinnacle of gothic and I have to say that this book is very successful in being nearly as atmospheric as that work. I really felt like I was transported into Emilie's world. This was, for me, the high point of what is a well-written and engrossing novel, even though I figured out some of the plot revelations well before the author wrote about them.

Emilie is an interested and rather complex character. I'm not sure I exactly sympathized with her. I certainly found her situation sympathetic and I thought the constraints with which she was raised were very harsh. Still, she at times acts so irrationally that I found it hard to relate to her. She's certainly the type of person who's extremely intelligent and yet very much lacking in common sense--which only stands to reason when considering the fact that she is isolated from nearly all society throughout her whole life. Still, there were times when I wondered if she had a brain in her head and she was often far too passive for my liking. She seemed so detached from her circumstances that I think this is why I couldn't really relate to her. I'm not sure if this was intentionally done but it actually works given the setting of the novel. I didn't necessarily like Emilie but I didn't dislike her either and I found her story extremely compelling.

What also interested me about this novel was the author's unvarnished look at the times in which Emilie lived. I liked how she stripped away the sparkling veneer or society and showed how shallow and indifferent the rich often were to the plight of the poor. The character that best exemplifies this is Aislabie and it is the casual indifference of characters like him that give this novel so much resonance and such a gothic flavor. The members of this novel's high society are so busy trying to make money or holding card parties or building themselves stylish mansions that they don't have time to deal with the very real issues suffered by their social inferiors.

In the early 1700's alchemy was still quite popular, in particular due to one of its most famous proponents, Sir Isaac Newton. At their estate in the English country side, Emilie and her father John Selden perform regular alchemical experiments and other investigations into the natural world. Emilie becomes slowly aware that she is one of her father's experiments--a child raised performing alchemical research.

Emilie's sheltered intellectual upbringing leaves her vulnerable to the seduction of one of the few young males that she has met. She leaves her father under the influence of sexual awakening and enters marriage without knowing her husband. Her father dies shortly after leaving many mysteries. Emilie has to learn quickly how to take care of herself in an era that oppresses females despite their intellectual prowess.

Alchemist's Daughter provides a tantalizing glimpse into the world of alchemy, as well as the culture of the early 1700's. The theme of how an individual develops emotional maturity as a balance to intellect is nicely portrayed. In a sense this novel is the opposite of a romance--the protagonist marries early on and in fact the goal is to escape the influence of the men in her life in order to develop as an individual.

Despite an overall promising novel as far as writing, historical details and plot, the impulsive protagonist is somewhat one-dimensional--she lacks the psychological complexity that would make the book substantial. Worth reading but not a classic!

I picked up "The Alchemist's Daughter" expecting to read something rich with alchemical lore. I wanted something magical like the superb "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell." Instead, the book was nothing more than a historical romance--and I am not a romance reader.

The heroine was extremely unlikeable, because she kept everything inside, made no friends, and didn't even ask about the world outside her home. So, when she is taken for a ride by the errant husband (and I could see he was trouble the minute he entered her home), I could hardly feel sorry for her. She was a perfect sheep ready for a fleecing.

I'd give this book only one star if it weren't for the fact that Katharine McMahon can really write with authority. Her descriptions are lush and elegant and it was this element of her novel that kept me going to the end. Sorry to say, I even found the ending lacking. And I learned nothing about alchemy in the process.

I loved THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER because the narrator, Emilie Selden is such a well-realized character. Far from the generic historical fiction heroine, Emilie is bright but also passive and sometimes foolish. I occasionally grew impatient with her when she refused to assert herself against her no-good husband, but this made her seem very human and I felt very connected to her while reading the book. THE ALCHAMIST'S DAUGHTER is a real page-turner: dreamy and gentle in tone, with the occasional note of unease that grows as the story progresses. I enjoyed how the author managed to incorporate many details into the beginning of the story that later grow in significance. I was surprised by the ending, which was very touching. The ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER is a refreshing and delightful read for anyone with an interest in women's historical fiction.

I was very impressed with this first novel. Katharine McMahon does an impressive job of evoking the 18th century and the life of a unique heroine, Emilie Selden, who is kept cloistered in her family's crumbling manor house and trained as a scientist by her severe, eccentric father. An intellectual in an era when women were never prized for their intellect, Emilie is the ultimate rationalist, until she falls in love with a handsome but caddish gentleman, who helps her escape from the cold, scientific world of her father's laboratory. But while Emilie is thrilled by the world of the senses, and passion and romance, she discovers that they carry a heavy price, and when she and her husband return to her father's house, she discovers that you truly can never go home again.

I found Emilie to be a truly compelling heroine, quite different from the usual female protagonists of literary or historical novels. There are elements of this book, particularly the setting, which reminded me of Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith, as well as the Victorian classics The Woman in White and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The writing is rich and evocative without being syrupy or overly precious. An excellent read for women who like sophisticated entertainment.

I only read half of this till I got to a rape scene that was too detailed. Up until then there was a lot of Science. On and on about alchemy and this poor sad girl who is her fathers science experiment. He takes notes and writes about everything she does and it is like one of his experiments. Poor girl is a mess but I really didn't care for her very much. The writing is very good and did hold me for a while.

I was initially very intrigued by this book's synopsis. I was hoping it would turn into one of those unbelievably good novels where I let my kids have cereal for supper rather than put my book down. Although I finished it, I did not care for it at all. The heroine was so cold and unreactive to all the things happening to her that I gave up on her halfway through the book. Several story developments were so predictable that I expected them long before they happened. The discovery of her father's journal with its contents and their effect on the heroine were, again, predictable. Too many long, wordy descriptions of situations, feelings or lack of, scenery, etc. By the end of the book, I completely disliked the main character so much that I didn't care if she ended up happy at the end or not. Cannot reccommend this book at all. The redeeming features were the secondary characters--Sarah (now, there's a woman I'd like to read a book about!), Gill, the housekeeper, the father. Overall, mildly entertaining but mostly a big disappointment. Will never read it again and don't recommend it.

The most any of us probably learned about the arcane discipline of alchemy is that it had something to do with turning base metals into gold. What far fewer of us may realize is how much the fanciful and seemingly impossible principles of alchemy contributed to the hard sciences of today, such as physics and chemistry.

In THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER, British novelist Katharine McMahon has stepped boldly into that shadowy period during the early 1700s when alchemy was in its twilight and the new physical sciences --- identified by such luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton --- were emerging into daylight.

For those at the top of the great societal heap known in Britain and Europe as the Age of Enlightenment, the whole universe must have seemed ripe for the picking. Scientific discoveries had vastly improved navigation, trade, medicine and manufacturing, bringing exciting new products, pastimes and services into the lives of those able to afford them.

Living outside London in a rundown rural estate on the periphery of all this activity, Emilie Selden, an unlikely apprentice to her reclusive widowed father, grows up as a rigorously trained natural scientist and philosopher. Barely aware of social graces, human emotions or the domestic arts, Emilie spends most of her first 19 years immersed in the intellectual crucible of her father's laboratory.

Then the opposite sex happens. Now that would seem almost a basic necessity for a historical novel, except that at this point several things could happen. The story could have dissolved into a banal romance with the usual steamy vocabulary; it could have forged virtuously onward as a boring triumph of feminist brains over shallow amour; or it could have lost its way entirely and become a social justice tract about how hard life could be for the working classes.

But this is where THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER shows much more than its scholarly mettle. From this most delicate turning point --- the year 1725 "when everything changed" in Emilie's retrospective eye --- McMahon achieves a brilliant, poignant and utterly unforgettable tour de force that weaves together the real complexity of human confusion and aspiration.

It's not only about a brilliant young woman surviving on the edge of her social and historical milieu; it's not only about love betrayed and love fiercely guarded; and it's not only about the thundering clash of ignorance and ethics. In McMahon's supple and experienced hands, her story is all of this and much more. Emilie is so fully and powerfully drawn that she fills, overflows, the strangely diverse historical container in which she began, herself a secret "experiment" whose conclusion is yet to be.

Through Emilie's reflections, notes, diaries and disasters, THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER takes you from the glories of the Age of Enlightenment to the foul underside of British 18th-century life, and everywhere in between. It's a page-turner with startling beauty and substance that takes the strange alchemy of a confused and confusing time and refines it into true gold. This is easily Katharine McMahon's best work yet.

--- Reviewed by Pauline Finch (paulinefinch@rogers.com)