Customer Reviews

Anatomy of Ghosts

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

John Holdsworth, former rare book dealer, is a haunted man. Having lost first his child, then his wife, in separate drowning accidents, his business has also gone under. Mrs. Holdsworth, before her apparent suicide, was obsessed with the idea that her son's spirit was communing with her, and when she dies, Holdsworth writes a monograph, The Anatomy of Ghosts, debunking their existence. John is floundering pretty badly when an unexpected offer of employment comes his way. Lady Anne Oldershaw, who has read his monograph, wishes to engage his services for two purposes, to organize her late husband's library, and to save her son Frank, a Cambridge undergrad, from apparent madness - he is convinced he's seen a ghost, and is currently housed in an asylum for the insane.

Dealing with the library is a straightforward task, but dealing with Frank is another matter entirely. What happened the night Frank encountered the "ghost"? Is the apparition that of Sylvia Whichcote, who drowned in the college pond that same night? How and why did she drown? Holdsworth resolves to find answers to those questions, and during his pursuit of the truth, encounters many more little secrets.

Author Taylor sets his mystery at "Jerusalem College", a walled conclave in which only two women reside. It is an atmospheric, somewhat furtive community, with a code of ethics very much its own. Holdsworth, the outsider, is forced to turn over many rocks before he can piece together a theory about what actually happened the night Frank Oldershaw had his breakdown. He also must deal, contemporaneously, with his own ghosts, in a decidedly unsympathetic climate. Taylor presents an uncompromising portrait of late 18th century society, in which a callous aristocracy keeps a heavy foot on the neck of the underclass. His central question, whether haunting a two way street that "flows in both directions" between haunter and haunted, is the spark that makes this story a compelling one. Andrew Taylor is a masterful British author who deserves more attention from American readers.

Some might think "The Anatomy of Ghosts" a bit too predictable for a mystery, but there are a lot more than a plot to appreciate this book.

I loved being immersed into an interesting college life of the 18th century Cambridge. Taylor describes the sounds and smells of the period so well that you feel you are actually there.

And reading the details such as vast difference between the lives of privileged students and scholarship students "sizars" itself was very much enjoyable. This is a perfect book for me to enjoy with a glass of good scotch whiskey after a long busy day.

Taylor is a masterful writer who makes 432 pages feel very short. I wish I knew him earlier. I'll definitely read more works by him.

The Anatomy of Ghosts is an incredibly well written suspense novel by Andrew Taylor. Taylor has crafted a first class mystery and at the same time keeps his reader's eyes riveted to the page from start to finish.

A woman is found dead on the grounds of Jerusalem College in Cambridge. The son of an aristocrat, Frank Oldershaw, goes mad after thinking he's seen this woman's ghost and ends up being committed to in an insane asylum. Our protagonist and unwitting detective, John Holdsworth, is down on his luck and is in desperate need of employment. A book seller by trade, Holdsworth is hired by Oldershaw's mother to take an inventory of Jerusalem College's library and--on the sly--investigate the circumstances of Frank's insanity.

The plot has more twists than San Francisco's Lombard Street. Moreover, the denizens of Taylor's novel are a motley group of characters scraped from the muck of Georgian England's complex caste system. What's more, the characters are all subject to the academic politics of an 18th Century college campus, where alliances and rivalries are of equal importance to scholarly pursuits. As if this were not enough, we are also introduced to a quite frankly creepy secret society on Jerusalem campus, where the mystery of the book both begins and ends.

As complicated as this may all seem, Taylor is such a terrific writer that he is able to pull this off. A master of detail, he takes as much care regarding the authenticity of the scenery as he does with the plot. In fact, he channels old England so authentically that you quite forget that you are reading a modern novel, and get the distinct feeling that this book might have been a gem that was recently uncovered from some hidden, 18th Century archive.

Some readers may find this adherence to period writing to be a liability. They may find the writing a little too elegant and the plot too slow to unfold. But for me, all this simply added to the richness of the novel. It made it more believable, more satisfying, and more suspenseful.

When I reviewed Taylor's Bleeding Heart Square (Bleeding Heart Square), I felt that it was incredibly well written but was just too slow and there was too little mystery. Whatever deficits that book had have been completely remedied here. In The Anatomy of Ghosts, Taylor is able to weave a tangled web, wind up his plot like a steel spring, and let it all explode off the page in the end, with all the mystery unraveled by the end of the novel. And just when you think you know how it all should end--Taylor throws in another twist.

The Anatomy of Ghosts was a pretty dull affair. Although the book had flashes of potential, the overall package had three very large problems.

The first is the characters managed to stay two dimensional at best through the entire 496 page read. You never get a real sense of development of characters. Sure, there are a lot of pages here, but most of the character development keeps characters reduced to stereotypes from the ages. There is no effort or attempt to define characters. Instead, most of the book is just padding and endless babble about things that could have easily been excised.


The second problem is that the book is just too long. Now I wouldn't have a problem with this if the author had provided a gripping story with lots of characterization, details and the like, but most of the book is, as I have said earlier, merely babble and padding. The author will go off on a tangent that has no bearing on the stories or characters at hand and will do so for a lengthy period of time. I'm surprised the publisher didn't have an editor whittle this down, because as the book stands, it is simply too dull to capture the attention of most readers. One could easily trim the book by 100-150 pages without losing any of the story at hand and it would have allowed the book a faster paced read where things actually stuck to the story and didn't make one's eyes gloss over from bordeom.

Finally, the story itself is a bit tedious. The author tries to overlay multiple plots and tie them all together, but out of 496 pages, the actual conclusion to the mystery doesn't occur until second and third to last pages. Then the book just ends. There is no actual resolution to the book. Characters, plot threads and entire storylines are just left up in the air without any summation. It's as if the author grew as bored with writing the book as I did with reading it and he promptly gave up on most of the plots just so he could finish the book.

At the end of the day, The Anatomy of Ghosts is a mediocre affair that really needed a better editor to keep the meanderings of the author in check. There are flashes of brilliance that made me want to keep reading, but most of the book was hard to get through dude to the author's writing style, the lack of depth, the sheer length of the book and the fact the author spent the majority of the book babbling about things or bringing up details and plot threads that were never returned to. It is safe to say that you should avoid this book unless you are a huge Andrew Taylor fan.

"Books are not luxuries. They are meat and drink for the mind."

This quote from John Holdsworth, a major character in The Anatomy of Ghosts, is a simple truth. And The Anatomy of Ghosts is a twelve-course feast.

Holdsworth is a widowed bookseller, haunted by his failures as a parent and husband, eking out a living in 18th century London selling used volumes from a handcart. One day he is approached by the emissary of Lady Anne Oldershaw, offering him the position of curator of her late husband's library, with the obligation of cataloguing and placing a value on its contents in anticipation of its bestowal upon university. This seemingly simple task has a corollary obligation: return Lady Anne's son Frank to sanity, and thus restored, to London.

Young Frank has been committed to a sanitarium because he insists he has seen a ghost while at school in Cambridge. Holdsworth retrieves him from the hospital and sets him up in a secluded country cottage. While Frank whiles away his time in the fresh country air, Holdsworth is delving into the fact of the ghost...for Frank's ghost was Sylvia, the deceased wife of Philip Whichcote, and the circumstances of her death are questionable, at best.

Holdsworth is a reluctant sleuth, bound by contemporary conventions of place and social structure, but his curiosity is driven in part by his unresolved guilt over the deaths of his own wife and son, and he oversteps his bounds so carefully those above him in social strata barely notice. He uncovers a secretive society whose chief object is debauchery and blasphemy, and sniffs out a connection between young Oldershaw, the deceased Sylvia, Whichcote, and numerous other players of high rank in the small theater that is Cambridge University. Everything, everyone, is connected, whether or not they are aware of the connection.

Andrew Taylor tells his multi-layered story with clarity and precision. His attention to detail, his ear for dialogue, his creation of character, all are wicked sharp. This sentence, for example, tells the reader everything one needs to know about both individuals mentioned: "The doorstep was whitestoned every morning by a gangling maid named Dorcas, a poorhouse apprentice who feared Mrs Phear far more than she feared Almighty God because He at least was reputed to be merciful." Sights, smells, sartorial details -- all lovingly exposited almost to the point of wishing for a kerchief of one's own to hold to one's nose. The Anatomy of Ghosts is a rare treat for a lover of historical fiction and a lover of mysteries. Both are exquisitely contained within this one volume. If I had to make a comparison between them, I'd say with The Anatomy of Ghosts, Andrew Taylor has outdone Caleb Carr's The Alienist.

Thank you to LibraryThing's Early Reviewers for the opportunity to read this book.

The father of a dead child, the mad son of a bishop and the ghost of (more than one) dead woman. Having read other historical novels by Andrew Taylor-- one set in the Regency (The American Boy aka An Unpardonable Crime), one set in the 1930's (Bleeding Heart Square) and one in the 1950's (Where Roses Fade)-- I think I can safely said that he is not a suspense writer who will appeal to everyone. In fact he often sets up a situation and then walks all the way around it, introducing characters, shifting view points, and generally approaching the conclusion by the least direct route. And that is exactly what he does in The Anatomy of Ghosts.

I liked this book, a lot. I thought Taylor did his research. His Cambridge of the late 18th century comes alive as he describes the politics of Jerusalem college, its students, staff and hangers-on. Most of the students are rich, young men who will become the movers and shakers of the country, just as their fathers were. One in particular who plays a pivotal role is a poor nobody on a scholarship. The rich young men are used to indulging themselves in anything other than study-- not usually hard reading men, as the Master observes when talking to the bookseller, Mr. Holdsworth. Also clubbable men, who do not realize how much power their indiscretions give others over their lives. The hangers-on circle them like flies, and vie with one another to take the most advantage of the situation. The politics of the High Table are just as unsavory and involve position and honors being granted or withheld based on anything other than worth or scholarship.

Taylor's endings also tend to be ambiguous and this is no exception. The reader is given all the information needed to solve the main mystery, but there are other threads that are not neatly tied.

So, in conclusion-- The Anatomy of Ghosts is a book that is likely to appeal to the reader who enjoys a leisurely, well researched novel that immerses one in the historical town of Cambridge and its environs, populated with characters from all ranks of society.

It all began late one night in mid-February 1786, when the secretive Holy Ghost Club met to admit into its ranks a gentleman of high stature and significant means named Frank Oldershaw. Hailing from London, Oldershaw gained entry to Cambridge University and began his studies at its Jerusalem College. Honored to be inducted into the Holy Ghost Club, he anxiously awaited the ceremony date. But on that cold February night, a young woman died, one who had been meant to play a crucial part in the evening's activities. That same night, one of the club's members, Philip Whichcote, lost his wife in a tragic drowning.

Back in London, bookseller John Holdsworth also grieves for his drowned wife, and his son. His loss has set him on a downward spiral in his good fortunes. Just as he is about to hit bottom, he is made a two-part offer he can ill afford to refuse. Lady Anne Oldershaw, recently widowed, wishes to donate her deceased husband's extensive library to Cambridge University. First, however, she must be certain that it is a worthy institution for such a generous bequest. Why choose a down-at-the-heels bookseller? The books are the lure, but the second part of the task is the most important. Lady Anne wants her son Frank to come home. Since the night of the club meeting, he has been in an asylum under the care of a doctor, said to have been driven mad by a ghost. Lady Anne has commissioned Holdsworth to inquire into the matter and clear things up.

Secret clubs have been around for centuries. Thankfully, few are as vile as the Holy Ghost Club. Reserved for young gentlemen exclusively, it introduces its members to society's most loathsome vices. What they do behind closed doors would more than besmirch the reputation of the university should they become known. It should come as no surprise, then, that someone would eventually get hurt.

Maybe Oldershaw didn't know what he was getting himself into. Or maybe he did. In either case, the events of that night will forever be linked with his descent into madness. To do Lady Anne's bidding, Holdsworth sets out to find the cause of Oldershaw's illness and restore his sanity. He believes that the talk of a ghost in the college gardens, the one that sent Oldershaw to the hospital, must have a rational explanation.

But Holdsworth has his own ghosts. He is still carrying a heavy burden of guilt over the deaths of his wife and boy. This commission might be fortuitous in more than a much-needed monetary reward. Maybe, if Holdsworth can rid Oldershaw of his ghost, he himself can be free again.

Set in the damp and cold winter season, THE ANATOMY OF GHOSTS shivers with suspense. The college's dead gardens and black ponds add to the bleak atmosphere one can picture a ghost preferring. Andrew Taylor takes his readers back to 1786 with astonishing period detail, making this a darkly charming novel best read with all the lights in the house on.

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

It is 1786, the night of the Last Supper at the Holy Ghost Club. All of the disciples are finishing up their toasts, and St. Peter (Frank Oldershaw) is preparing to be inducted. As he goes to take his sacrifice, tragedy strikes. Now Frank is residing in the house of Dr. Jermyn, with his mind apparently broken, speaking of ghosts and quacking like a duck.

John Holdsworth is a former bookseller, on the verge of penury, having lost in quick succession his son, his wife, his business, and his home. His book, The Anatomy of Ghosts, caused a mild sensation at one point, with it's blasting of the 'charlatans' who take advantage of the grief-stricken by telling them that they can talk to the spirit of their dear departed. With it's debunking of many of the myths surrounding alleged "ghosts", it was in high demand. However, with the destruction by fire of his printing press, and the subsequent loss of his shop, John is not in a position to continue with it's distribution.

When John is commissioned by Lady Anne Oldershaw, daughter of the late Earl of Vauden whose family founded Jerusalem College, to tabulate the college's library contents to see where her husband's book collection might fit in, his secondary (but most important) task is to see about Frank, Lady Anne's only child, and to help him if at all possible. Did Frank really see a ghost? Is his sanity beyond saving?

As John journeys to Jerusalem, he uncovers an intricately layered plot where the players aren't always clearly defined. In a world of privilege where class plays a role in every interaction, will he be able to unravel the deeper mysteries and expose the secrets that lie at the bottom of them?

This is a brilliantly-written book, reminiscent of Poe in it's styling. There's madness, suicide, cruelty, mystery, ghosts, jealousy, bribery, and possibly murder, all set in 18th century England, where class is paramount, and ambitions run amok. The very beginning was a bit confusing for me, but it all became much clearer as the tale unfolded. As the fingers of suspicion point first to one, and then to another, you, along with Holdsworth, will begin to wonder who the real villains are. This is a wonderful 18th century thriller, with finely-detailed characters and a plot that will keep you hanging in to the very end.

QUOTES

He had never really noticed the poor in the days of his prosperity, except as irritants like lice or, at best, as bystanders in the great drama of existence in which their betters performed the speaking parts. He murmured these words aloud and a man who was passing gave him a wide berth. The only knowledge worth having was that a hungry belly made you a little mad.

Her dying husband cared more about the fate of his enemy than about the future of his wife. In the antechamber of death, hate was more powerful than love.

Trust youth to turn an episode of drunken adultery into a three-volume novel and present it to you before breakfast.

BOOK RATING: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Well-written and atmospheric, with a gothic sensibility, a bit of melodrama and characters very much rooted in their time - 1786 -British author Taylor's latest revolves around the deaths of two young women, the sighting of a ghost, and the mental breakdown of a wealthy Cambridge student.

The protagonist, bookseller and printer John Holdsworth, has lost everything. First his little son in a drowning accident, then his business, and finally his inconsolable wife, who drowns herself.

But a wealthy widow rescues him from bankruptcy, summoning him to evaluate her husband's books and prepare a legacy to her son's Cambridge college library. But that's only part of it.

" `I wish to consult you about ghosts,' "Lady Anne Oldershaw tells him. She had been impressed by his book debunking the spirits (written in anguished response to his wife's dependency on a charlatan) and wants him to help her son, Frank. Now confined to an asylum, Frank lost his mind after seeing a ghost and refuses to see his mother.

The narrative moves among several points of view, so that the reader knows more about Frank's background than Holdsworth does, particularly concerning his initiation at a secret society during which a young woman died. But Frank's ghost is a different young woman - Sylvia Whichcote, drowned wife of the society's dissolute leader. Drowning runs "like a watery thread through the whole sad affair," Holdsworth reflects.

As Holdsworth moves about the college, delving into secrets, grudges and ruthless college politics, an attraction sparks between him and the elderly college Master's young wife, Elinor. Naturally they repress this growing fever as Elinor helps Holdsworth gain perspective on the insular and privileged college life.

Taylor threads each plot line through its social complications, from the entitled arrogance of privileged young men to the precarious lives of uneducated servants and the cloistered existence of upper-class women.

Although Holdsworth is respected for his professional skill, he is also a tradesman and treated as such, especially by wealthy young Frank. Holdsworth may be doing his utmost to help pry him from the 18th-century idea of a progressive mental institution, but he's still basically a servant to Frank. Class provides motivation and dictates consequences, and money plays a lesser, though still crucial, role.

The mystery is intriguing and dramatic, but less key to the novel's success than character, setting and social structure. Fans of Iain Pears, Charles Palliser, and David Liss should relish this well-developed book, as should anyone who enjoys complex characters mired in plots integral to their times.

The cast of "The Anatomy of Ghosts," includes sanctimonious villains, unctuous servants, poor but noble scholars, spoiled rich kids, the clinically insane and the merely odd. Oh, and a night soil man nicknamed Tom Turdman. (Well, didn't Shakespeare have a character named Toby Belch?) If you chuckled at the last, you might enjoy this book. If not, well, read on.

Plot: Bookseller John Holdsworth, down on his luck, due to a fire and the deaths of his wife and son by drowning, is commissioned by a wealthy patron to assess her library which she plans to give to a local college. She's also read a piece he's written on ghosts and wants him to assess her son, a university student who has come undone after a secret society initiation and insists he saw a ghost. As Holdsworth doesn't believe in the supernatural, he seems like a good candidate to convince the boy that he was mistaken. A seemingly straightforward assignment - only Holdsworth will soon find himself in a web of intrigue and a mystery with multi-layers.

While the supernatural twist added an element of intrigue and the academic setting seemed like it would be suspenseful, I found the story to be predictable and some of the characters cartoonishly evil. On the other hand, this writer has written a ton of books, some of which are praised to the skies on the cover of this one.