This masterful historical novel by Deborah Noyes, the lauded author of Angel & Apostle, The Ghosts of Kerfol, and Encyclopedia of the End (starred PW) is two stories: The first centers upon the strange, true tale of the Fox Sisters, the enigmatic family of young women who, in upstate New York in 1848, proclaimed that they could converse with the dead. Doing so, they unwittingly (but artfully) gave birth to a religious movement that touched two continents: the American Spiritualists. Their followers included the famous and the rich, and their effect on American spirituality lasted a full generation. Still, there are echoes. The Fox Sisters is a story of ambition and playfulness, of illusion and fear, of indulgence, guilt and finally self-destruction. The second story in Captivity is about loss and grief. It is the evocative tale of the bright promise that the Fox Sisters offer up to the skeptical Clara Gill, a reclusive woman of a certain age who long ago isolated herself with her paintings, following the scandalous loss of her beautiful young lover in London. Lyrical and authentic and more than a bit shadowy Captivity is, finally, a tale about physical desire and the hope that even the thinnest faith can offer up to a darkening heart.
Captivity
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From Publishers Weekly
Noyes (Angel and Apostle) is so constrained by, or perhaps so entranced with the true story of the 19th-century mediums Maggie and Kate Fox that she founders in crafting a satisfying novel based upon their lives. The story opens in rural New York in 1848, when teenage Maggie and her younger sister, Kate, claim that rapping sounds in their house emanate from a ghost whose murdered corpse is buried in the basement. It ends a decade later, after the sisters have achieved widespread fame for their séances. The Fox sisters are credited with inspiring the American Spiritualist movement, which grew rapidly for the rest of the century. Noyes includes some of the key figures who spurred the movement's popularity and aptly draws upon the themes of classism and sexism that influenced its leaders with wonderfully lavish period detail. Viewpoints alternate between Maggie's and her friend Clara Gill, an Englishwoman with a tragic past, but Clara's life seems hopeless from the beginning and the reader is kept at a frustrating distance from Maggie's inner thoughts. The legend of the Fox sisters is intriguing; however, Noyes adds little illumination to the nonfiction canon. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
In this new work of historical fiction, Noyes (Angels and Apostles) effectively offers two separate stories, both taking place in mid-19th-century America and England. First, there is the story of Clara Gill, a reclusive illustrator spinster shut away from the world at large in her father's home in Rochester, NY. Clara's sternness and acute observations often intimidate the few people with whom she does interact, and as she is no longer young, her prospects in life are diminished. The second narrative focuses on the strange circumstances concerning two young sisters, Maggie and Kate Fox, whose lives takes a decidedly notorious turn when it is believed that they are able to communicate with the dead. When Clara, her father, and the Fox family become intertwined, Clara finds in Maggie something of a friend, which prompts her to begin to examine her own earlier life in London. Never knowing whether Maggie and Katie are charlatans, Clara nevertheless admires the girls' tenacity in warding off skeptics and continuing to offer séances to interested people. VERDICT A novel of beguiling characters that probes both belief and the veracity of emotion, this endlessly fascinating work should be considered by all fiction readers. --Library Journal
Captivity is a historical novel based on the true story of the Fox sisters, who claimed they could communicate with the dead. Able to convince a group of people of their abilities, they garnered a following that would grow to become a religious movement known as American Spiritualism, or simply Spiritualism. The three Fox sisters relied on raps to communicate with the dead, having the spirits count off the letters, words, and numbers they were trying to say. Deborah Noyes uses the history of the Fox sisters and then builds on it with the story of Clara Gill. Clara has suffered the death of a loved one and while she is skeptical at the ability of the Fox sisters, she begins to embrace the possibility of reconnecting with the spirit of the love she lost. The novel switches back and forth between Clara s narrative and that of the Fox sisters particularly Maggie who, in the novel, works for some time at Clara s house. One of the things I liked best about this book is the fact the way each chapter shifts between the women s points of view. I m a big fan of nontraditional narratives because I feel it keeps the momentum going and keeps the reader interested. Even more to my liking, Clara s story jumps a bit through time. In the first few Clara-centric chapters, for instance, you learn that she has suffered some sort of loss that has left her reclusive from even her father, the only family she has left. What you don t immediately learn is how she got this way. As her narrative unfolds, the reader it taken back about ten years to explain her past, but it takes several chapters to get to the full story. People who prefer traditional narratives will likely get very frustrated that it takes so long to understand what s going on. Because communicating with spirits is already a seemingly fictional topic, it was hard to separate fiction from the alleged reality, and it certainly sparked some interest in me to learn more about the Fox sisters and Spiritualism. Within minutes of finishing the book, I was online, searching for Spiritualism and the history of the Fox sisters. From the little I could find out, it certainly seems that Noyes spent quite some time researching for this novel. In the end, though, it doesn t really matter what s fact and what s fiction. The novel is written in the third-person, but Noyes still describes what people are thinking and feeling enough for the reader to become invested in the characters. On top of that, she was able to pull me into the story and believe everything she s presenting as complete truth. It s rare that a novel can do that with as much ease as this one. --Feminist Review
Captivity is a historical novel based on the true story of the Fox sisters, who claimed they could communicate with the dead. Able to convince a group of people of their abilities, they garnered a following that would grow to become a religious movement known as American Spiritualism, or simply Spiritualism. The three Fox sisters relied on raps to communicate with the dead, having the spirits count off the letters, words, and numbers they were trying to say. Deborah Noyes uses the history of the Fox sisters and then builds on it with the story of Clara Gill. Clara has suffered the death of a loved one and while she is skeptical at the ability of the Fox sisters, she begins to embrace the possibility of reconnecting with the spirit of the love she lost. The novel switches back and forth between Clara s narrative and that of the Fox sisters particularly Maggie who, in the novel, works for some time at Clara s house. One of the things I liked best about this book is the fact the way each chapter shifts between the women s points of view. I m a big fan of nontraditional narratives because I feel it keeps the momentum going and keeps the reader interested. Even more to my liking, Clara s story jumps a bit through time. In the first few Clara-centric chapters, for instance, you learn that she has suffered some sort of loss that has left her reclusive from even her father, the only family she has left. What you don t immediately learn is how she got this way. As her narrative unfolds, the reader it taken back about ten years to explain her past, but it takes several chapters to get to the full story. People who prefer traditional narratives will likely get very frustrated that it takes so long to understand what s going on. Because communicating with spirits is already a seemingly fictional topic, it was hard to separate fiction from the alleged reality, and it certainly sparked some interest in me to learn more about the Fox sisters and Spiritualism. Within minutes of finishing the book, I was online, searching for Spiritualism and the history of the Fox sisters. From the little I could find out, it certainly seems that Noyes spent quite some time researching for this novel. In the end, though, it doesn t really matter what s fact and what s fiction. The novel is written in the third-person, but Noyes still describes what people are thinking and feeling enough for the reader to become invested in the characters. On top of that, she was able to pull me into the story and believe everything she s presenting as complete truth. It s rare that a novel can do that with as much ease as this one. --Feminist Review
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Nothing here is as it seems.",
By
This review is from: Captivity (Hardcover)
Captivity begins in Rochester New York in 1848 and tells the story of sisters Leah, Maggie and Kate Fox, who helped give rise to the Spiritualist movement. Younger sisters Maggie and Kate seem to have a gift of communicating with the spirit world via "rapping" (don't ask me to explain it), and managed by older sister Leah they capitalized on their *skills* by giving séances and summoning the dead for grieving loved ones. Their story is intertwined with the fictional one of Clara Gill, who befriends Maggie, and we gradually learn about her back-story with her father and aunts in London and how she came to be such a recluse.
And that's all I'm really going to tell you. Despite a rocky start that could have been helped by having a bit of knowledge on the sisters and their history (or better yet taking the time to read the publisher's handout prior to starting), once I did get a handle on it I enjoyed it a lot. The writing is lovely and very sparse - no words wasted here - and you'll be hard pressed not to mark the book up with your favorite quotes. "Real death is not a parlor game but a flat heaviness that weights the limbs, that makes every step a struggle, every breath reproach and violation. It is mold on the morning firewood and a chill that won't go even when the hearth is banked to roaring, even when the familiar quilt is wound full round weighted legs and feet on a stool like a winding sheet. It is the bitterness of herbs in an undertaker's parlor and damp shoes by a hole in the ground and the absence of sunlight and emptiness beyond reckoning." As for whether it was real or all a hoax? Well you'll just have to read it for yourself and decide, won't you? This isn't an action packed page turner and might not appeal to all readers, but I would definitely recommend it for those interested in the topic as well as savoring the beautiful prose. FTC - why yes I did get it from the publisher. I put in a purchase request to the library first and they declined to buy it (not professionally reviewed they said), and then I got a tip that there were still review copies available. Shoot me.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"[We now have] a new spiritual telegraph...that will change the world, letter by letter. Word by word.",
By
This review is from: Captivity (Hardcover)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Mary Todd Lincoln, and Mae West were only a few of the famous adherents of Spiritualism, a movement which swept the country from around 1850 through the 1920s. In CAPTIVITY, author Deborah Noyes recreates the story of this movement from its inauspicious founding by two children--Margaret "Maggie" Fox, age fourteen, and her younger sister "Kate," age eleven. These children, just by appearing in the small houses in their neighborhood near Rochester, New York, could inspire rappings by "other-worldly presences" on the walls, tables, and ceilings. Even scientists were baffled.
Pursuing the themes of love and loss, life and death, and the real and the spiritual, which were the focus of her 2005 novel ANGEL AND APOSTLE, Noyes focuses here on the childhood and youth of Maggie and Kate Fox, beginning in 1848. Cleverly manipulated and controlled by their older sister Leah, who foresaw enormous financial potential in their careers as mediums, the Fox girls supported their family, traveled all over the country, and, for the first time had a chance to wear pretty clothes and meet important people. As the title suggests, however, they were also captives of their celebrity. Alternating with the story of the Fox children is a parallel narrative beginning in London in 1835. Clara Gill, a shy nineteen-year-old painter of animals, falls for an assistant zookeeper below her in "station." Will Cross, the zookeeper, is equally smitten, and Clara begins to hope that they might have a future. From the opening chapter, which begins in 1848, in Rochester, New York, however, the reader recognizes that Clara's presence in Rochester, thirteen years later, indicates that something dire has happened. She is living as a recluse, and she and Will are not together. The narrative switches from 1848 in Rochester, with its concentration on the Foxes, back and forth to 1835 in London with the emphasis on the Clara, then focuses on the self-absorbed Clara and the exploited Foxes together in 1848 in Rochester. Noyes has a wonderful eye for observation, and her ability to translate these observations into vibrant description is stellar. Long, well-described passages set the tone and mood and establish a mysterious atmosphere, though the tendency to use two adjectives where one would do sometimes becomes a stylistic annoyance. Unfortunately, the structure of the novel lacks a strong connection between the two separate plot lines, and ultimately, it feels forced. Clara's weakness as a character with whom the reader feels empathy limits one's ability to identify with her, and the Fox sisters themselves are not fully developed, however fascinating they may be as Spiritualism's founders. For readers interested in the story of Spiritualism, Noyes's lively history may supersede the novel's structural limitations. Mary Whipple Angel and Apostle
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The world in little.",
By Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Captivity (Hardcover)
Be prepared to be stunned by the sheer beauty of this author's prose and the horror of the truth she bears in a tale begun in London in 1835. The cosseted Clara Gill spends her days illustrating species of animals for a naturalist tome soon to be published, under the watchful eye of her retiring father and a philanthropic "uncle", her every action guided by their concern for her good name and prospects. And when a tentative romance blooms with an unsuitable zookeeper of no social status, the result is a brief euphoria, a crime of passion and the death of hope. Her reputation in tatters, Clara and her father find respite in America, where the "madwoman" keeps to her dusty room amid memories and drawings that cover the walls, the tables, the floor. This is the compromise Clara as made for the love of Will Cross, "the world in little", until the appearance of temporary maid, Maggie Fox. One of the infamous Fox sisters, authors of the American Spiritualist Movement, Maggie is not intimidated by spinster Clara, poking and prodding the recluse until the two forge a bond that ultimately- agonizingly slowly- seduces Clara from her retreat to Maggie's lair, where spirits rap, ghostly apparitions appear and clients sob in relief to communicate with lost loved ones. Much as Clara has defined her space in an unfriendly world, Maggie does the same, only on a grander scale, suffering the rude examinations of committees, the denunciation of skeptics and the threats of unbelievers. And though Maggie encourages her audience, gathering accolades and dollar bills, she never reveals her secrets or those of her sisters. In this unlikely pair, Noyes reveals the secret lives of repressed females in the late 19th century and the exorbitant price of rebellion in the face of rectitude, when arrogant men seek to dominate the natural world and reason proves insubstantial in the spiritual realm. The prose is extraordinarily imaginative: the Widow Bray's "tidy wisdom"; Clara's admission, "It hurts to be seen"; Clara and Will's preference for "the world in little". Clara's reputation is already sullied at birth: "The poor wretch stopped the world on the way in, killing her mother." Even the incipient friendship with Maggie carries risk: "Maggie Fox, unexceptional farm girl, has pinned her to a board, recalled her from the human race, enslaved her anew with longing." This otherworldly tale is all too real, Clara and Maggie victims of paternal repression, their caged brilliance ignored by a rigid society that hawks itself as enlightened. Like anxious ghosts tethered to the earth, Clara and Maggie long for release. Noyes unlocks their secrets, tells their stories, sets them free. Luan Gaines/2010.
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