A NOTE ON THE SPOILERS
A while ago I got a comment tantrum from a semiliterate rando because apparently some people are too stupid to understand a SPOILER WARNING, so I thought I’d elaborate on my exact definition of a spoiler. I AM GOING TO SUMMARIZE THE ENTIRE BOOK, INCLUDING THE ENDING. Think of me as a very niche Wikipedia. If you have a problem with that, you are welcome to stop reading at any time. I don’t make money from this content. I don’t care how many people read it.
This is your legacy, Fedup: an extra line on an obscure book blog that probably doesn’t even have ten followers. It’s not exactly a Nobel prize, but it’s still quite a nifty little achievement. Your parents must be so proud. Please seek help.
Slashed Beauties
A. Rushby
You’re off the edge of the map, mate. Here there be spoilers.
And then I was in my thirties and upset about a fictional parrot. I feel more for the parrot than I do for any of the human characters, to be perfectly honest. I suppose this is a terrible thing to admit, but I care more about animals than I care about people, and that’s just the way it is.
London, 1769. Eighteen-year-old Eleanor – wide-eyed and sweetly appealing but not especially bright, though she claims her college-educated father taught her to think for herself – takes her childhood sweetheart at his literal word when he invites her to run away from their village. Despite extravagant promises of marriage, he predictably abandons her after a week or so of wild premarital sex. Homeless, penniless, and deflowered, Eleanor attempts to locate the faithless Nicholas but instead is recruited by Elizabeth, an almost supernaturally beautiful woman who is obsessed with establishing her own brothel. She tries to make it sound classier by calling it a sérail, but it’s a brothel. To this end, she has already rented a large house and “hired” another young woman named Emily, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy English man and his no-longer-secret Barbadian mistress. Emily is another rescue: she was tricked into a fake wedding with a man who then raped and abandoned her, only in this case Elizabeth was able to track down the runaway husband and squeeze a considerable amount of money out of him. This is not the same as saying that Emily received so much as a penny of that money, but, well, justice was served, sort of.
With her two deeply indebted rescues in tow, Elizabeth sets about marketing her sérail in advance of its planned grand opening, parading Eleanor and Emily through town in jaw-droppingly expensive gowns and offering up their virginity for auction. The plan is to sell their virginity as many times as possible to as many gullible men as possible, but the sérail is plagued by increasing debt and some negative publicity generated by Elizabeth’s harebrained confrontation with an ex-lover. As her behavior grows increasingly abusive, Eleanor and Emily begin to fall in love and to dream of a life together, though they know this is unlikely to succeed. The whole scheme bottoms out when Elizabeth succumbs to a vicious cold that looks sort of like the pox. Against Emily’s sensible advice, Eleanor doggedly stays by Elizabeth’s side and nurses her back to relative health. (Is Elizabeth grateful? No.) This is not the end of their troubles: Emily contracts syphilis from the man who raped her and Eleanor learns that she herself is pregnant, and word quickly gets around, effectively shutting the sérail down before it can even begin.
Humiliated and fuming, hounded by debt collectors and with her beauty devoured by her illness, Elizabeth sells Eleanor and Emily to a witch named Briar, who works with a closeted female anatomist to create picture-perfect wax models of all three women. Eleanor and Emily end up enslaved, chained to their models and forced to stalk the streets at night, murdering horny medical students according to the anatomist’s sense of justice; Elizabeth, of course, manipulates the situation to fit her own best interests, and, though bound to her model, enjoys a degree of freedom and autonomy that Eleanor and Emily lack. However, her demanding nature quickly creates tension between herself and Briar, and a botched murder attempt leads an enraged posse straight to the anatomist’s door. Meanwhile, Eleanor is contacted by a young witch named Lucy, a newer member of Briar’s former coven, and learns that the coven is planning to rescue her and Emily. Almost everything goes wrong on the night of the escape, but Eleanor is successfully released from her model, and makes it to safety. Deathly ill and desperate to protect Eleanor, Emily chooses to burn in the fire that consumes the anatomist’s house, but with her final breaths persuades Briar to change the spell that controls Elizabeth. During the chaos, Elizabeth’s model is stolen by a gang of men, including the one who came within a hair’s breadth of being murdered by Eleanor.
Almost 300 years later, Eleanor – now called Alys – arrives in Seoul to arrange Elizabeth’s transport back to London. Though more or less free, Alys remains tied to her model: she has supernatural strength and will never age, but also still suffers bouts of nausea from her deathless pregnancy, which was neither aborted nor carried to term. After her escape she split ways with the coven upon learning that Emily never made it out of the anatomist’s studio, and spent the next three centuries establishing herself as an antiques dealer. She now has clients all over the world, but she remains haunted by her own past, as well as by Emily and Elizabeth. Collectively they have become known as the three anatomical Venuses, rumored to rise in human form by night and stalk the streets in search of any man who dared profane them with his gaze, which actually is God’s literal truth. Eleanor’s model is safely in the coven’s hands and Emily’s is known to have been burned, but Elizabeth remains at large, changing hands multiple times and gaining a reputation for seducing her nominal owners. This is the reason Alys arrives in Seoul in the first place: Elizabeth’s current owner, the wealthy Mr. Yoon, has just recently expired, and the newly widowed Mrs. Yoon is eager to get rid of her. There is, alas, a wrinkle: the Yoons’ adult son, Geon Yoon, was exposed to Elizabeth – either purposely or accidentally – and fell under her spell. Mrs. Yoon offers Alys £150,000 to destroy Elizabeth within the week, but agrees to £250,000 and two weeks when Geon disrupts their meeting with his frenzied desire to see Elizabeth.
Upon securing Elizbeth, Alys returns to London, where she connects with the descendants of Briar’s old coven. The coven never gave up on Eleanor, or on Alys; even after she violently rejected them, they waited in the background, ready to assist if and when she decided she was ready to destroy the remaining Venuses. Eventually she managed to make friends with several of them, at least within the current generation, and has been fairly secure in the knowledge that their magic is keeping Elizabeth under wraps. Of course, the rules never seem to apply to Elizabeth, and she somehow manages to worm her way into Alys’s mind, planting doubt and making Alys question her own desire to finally lay the remaining Venuses to rest. Alys is also hounded by Catherine, the obnoxious descendant of the obnoxious man who wasn’t actually murdered by Eleanor but spent the rest of his life acting as if he had been. His nearly-murder became the stuff of family legend, imbuing Catherine with an absolutely indefensible sense of entitlement as she unapologetically stalks Alys, bombards her with messages, and demands face-to-face meetings. When confronted with her own sociopathy, she claims that everything she does is legit because she’s an investigative journalist. (Alys’s reaction to all this stalking? She feels sorry for Catherine, because she “deserves” to write her book. Counterpoint: no she doesn’t.) I would not have objected if Alys had risen from her model one last time, for old time’s sake, and gutted Catherine like a pig in broad daylight.
But this is Eleanor/Alys we’re talking about and the self-destructive compassion is as strong with this one as it was with Pan Li Lan, which in practical terms means that Catherine thrives all the way to the end, until she is magically enslaved by the risen Elizabeth. As I say, the usual rules do not apply to Elizabeth and never have, so she handily resurrects herself with the unwitting help of Catherine and Geon Yoon, and tries to attack Alys and the coven. Though she seems to have the upper hand, the coven manages to take advantage of Briar’s altered spell, Emily’s final legacy, and uses it to trap Elizabeth in her model forever. She is then burned to ashes in an industrial-grade incinerator, permanently freeing Alys from her influence. With Elizabeth dead and properly gone, Alys briefly ponders the coven’s suggestion that she stay, but ultimately chooses to return to her own model. All of her money and possessions have been transferred to Ro, her best friend within the coven, and all debts to Elizabeth – real or imagined – have been settled. Per their earlier agreement, the coven burns Eleanor/Alys, and she is finally released to the dignity of a real death, where she reunites with Emily.
I’m of two minds. The book isn’t great. The writing is okay, if a bit clunky in places. The characters aren’t amazing. The historical portion drags quite a bit during Elizabeth’s aggressive marketing campaign, and it doesn’t pick up until Eleanor and Emily start murdering people. But the book is also compelling and addictive, and I can’t really make that make sense. It hooked me in the very beginning just from the very simple fact of Alys sitting on a train in downtown Seoul with her satchel by her side. Maybe it’s the word “satchel.” Maybe it’s because I’m deeply shallow in some respects, and always have been. But even just the sliiiiiiiightest hint of travel – a satchel, a train, a hotel room – is enough to bite me hard with the travel bug, and that is exactly what happened here, because I honestly loved reading about Alys’s journey. Eleanor’s, not so much. Sorry, girl. You’re kinda boring. I also wish I could have loved Emily more than I did. I do like her, but it’s not in a full-blown crazy I Will Murder For You kind of way, because her character is so loosely sketched. Aside from her alcoholism and a few moments of actual seriousness, there’s not much to see aside from what Eleanor/Alys tells us, later, in retrospect. If there’s one character I did feel for, it’s the damn parrot, as I’ve mentioned above. Polly is such a small part of the story that she didn’t quite make it into the summary, but she left a greater impression on me than any of the human characters because of this truly awful scene.
But instead of offering solace, Elizabeth begins to shake the cage violently. “Quiet,” she says. “Quiet!”…I look on in horror as Elizabeth rattles the cage again and again, the animal crying out in terror…
Another rattle of the cage sees Polly finally fall silent. But her eyes, the way she looks about herself…For a moment, I do not understand what she is looking for. And then I realize – she is searching for her person. She had thought it was Elizabeth, and now she knows she is on her own. Adrift. Abandoned. Yet again, she has no one, can rely on no one.
Not that I wasn’t thinking it already, given that she’d already recruited and groomed two young women for an upmarket whorehouse, but this was the moment I decided good and all that Elizabeth could burn. The final nail on the coffin (or the incinerator) came when the repossessed Polly was returned to Elizabeth, in her cage, as a stuffed trophy, showing clear signs of a horrifically painful death. This is why I will never understand Eleanor/Alys’s compassion as she stubbornly stays by Elizabeth’s bedside, supports her through the death of the sérail, and, at the very, very end, openly admits that she could not go through with the burning if she knew Elizabeth could feel the pain of the burning inside her model?!?!?! Girl, what is wrong with you? Was 300 years not enough time to plant some sense in that head? Elizabeth would burn the world to the ground if she could be queen of the ashes, and you’re worried that she might feel pain? Who fucking cares? Is her fleeting pain somehow more important, more sacred, than the safety of literally EVERYONE ELSE who exists on this planet? I get that you’re a pointedly good person and we’re supposed to understand that you are Kindness Personified, but that line was almost enough to make me throw the book. Let the bitch burn. There are worse tragedies in the world than a sentient wax doll that can feel pain.
The thing is, I would’ve been fine with the exaggerated kindness if it hadn’t come at the cost of Eleanor/Alys’s personal safety. In my opinion, that is a trade that should never have to be made, and that is the author’s fault. She could have been kind and compassionate while also not forgetting that she herself is deserving of care; and, in the end, her kindness only comes back to bite her, because Elizabeth blames her for Emily’s more practical plan of leaving her (Elizabeth) to perish of sickness. I am torn on what can be blamed on the author and what can be blamed on the character, but, given that the author controls the strings, I know which way I’m leaning. And I am so sick of the prototypical Strong Smart Female CharacterTM who somehow doesn’t have a lick of sense but will still claim she can think for herself, and I really wish every fucking writer would quit leaning into this trope. We saw this with June Osbourne, whose character “development” drove me bananas in The Handmaid’s Tale; with Song Leiyin, whose boneheaded teenaged lust drove her to her own death in Three Souls; and with Claire Fraser, who was the sole reason I DNF’d Outlander because I cannot vibe with a character who will literally run screaming and waving her arms in the middle of a battle specifically to attract attention. I get why she wanted attention, but it was still a stupid solution. Like, why don’t we try to lie low until we figure out where everyone is and who’s on which side? Is that too much to ask?
Common sense is a quality that appears to be lacking all around, because a lot of the characters’ decisions just don’t add up. I wish Eleanor had used some of that independent thought to recognize Elizabeth’s toxicity for herself, but she instead uses it to question every word that comes out of Emily’s mouth, to dismiss her repeated warnings. Later, when it’s already almost too late, she uses that same independent thought to decide that Lucy is crazy and that the best possible solution is to stomp shouting through every room of the anatomist’s house. In the present day, she allows herself to be bullied into a meeting with Catherine – why? There’s no reason she has to see her. If it’s about keeping her away from a specific location, all she has to do is switch her own location. Catherine will follow her. Even if she doesn’t, she has free will and can still decide to visit all the places Alys has visited – which she has already done. Alys is 300 years old, but all it takes is one vaguely threatening text from a relative child for her to cave. Forgive me if I’m not impressed. While we’re at it, it is unclear why Alys thought one week was an absurd deadline when it takes less than an hour to trap and destroy Elizabeth; but perhaps she wanted more time to get her affairs in order, or to say goodbye to the people she cared about. I don’t know. There are too many unknowns.
I am also puzzled by Briar, who for some reason gives Elizabeth absolutely everything she wants, including special powers that Eleanor and Emily do not have. If Elizabeth herself is not a witch – and she is not – there is absolutely no reason to honor any sort of agreement with her. If there is anything in the world that can physically enforce their bargain, it is never revealed. Personally, I would’ve thought the smart thing to do would be to agree to Elizabeth’s terms and then either destroy her or enslave her. Given that Briar is supposed to be a Bad Witch, I wouldn’t have thought this was beneath her, and I don’t know why she let herself be captivated by the worst client in history. “bEcAuSe ShE’s ElIzAbEtH” isn’t going to cut it. That excuse is plastered all over this book, and it’s stupid, and it doesn’t work.
All that being said: I would have been delighted if Emily had survived, if she had never gotten syphilis, if she and Alys had collaborated in the present day to destroy Elizabeth. I would have loved it if they had made their way back to each other over the centuries, if they had managed to have just one year together in a cottage with roses. I am glad they are both at peace; they deserve it. But I also want the cottage with the roses for them. I am more than a little bit miffed that the half-Barbadian Emily was the first to die. We’re at the point in time and space and culture where people should really be catching this kind of thing for themselves, because it’s the first thing that smacked me in the face when Alys mentioned that Emily had already been destroyed. It got even worse when I learned why Emily had been destroyed; it reads just a little too much like a sacrifice for the development of the mediocre white girl, even if that was not the intention. It’s not that I wanted her to spend three centuries suffering from permanent syphilis, it’s more that I wanted her never to have encountered syphilis in the first place. She deserved better.
Surprisingly, I am thinking of buying my own copy (the one I read came from the library) and I will be getting it in hardcover, so maybe take my complaints with a grain of salt, as always. I perhaps did not need quite as much of Eleanor as I got – I did prefer Alys’s chapters, in spite of Catherine – but things got interesting fast once she really got rolling, even if I am still sore about Polly. At the very least the book tends to read fast, and it didn’t take me too long to speed through it on my work breaks. If I didn’t exactly love the good characters, I didn’t hate them either, and I would spend time with them again. (But also, I really had trouble telling them apart sometimes because their names all start with an E.) The ending was a little rushed and the solution somewhat anticlimactic, but I can’t argue with the overall results. At the end of the day, Elizabeth still burned, and that’s all I can ask for.
