the doll factory by elizabeth macneal

the evening standard may 2 2019

Elizabeth Macneal’s debut historical novel arrives with some fanfare from the publishers of The Miniaturist, Jessie Burton’s wildly successful debut historical novel of 2014. For the most part, the excitement is justified. Macneal is a talented writer and this is a frankly moreish novel. We are not in Amsterdam in the 1680s this time but London in the 1850s.

Macneal’s heroine, Iris Whittle, was born with a slight deformity which has not dented her sanguine temperament, unlike her once beautiful but now bitter and pockmarked twin sister, Rose. It also doesn’t prevent her from catching the eye of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. 

The sisters paint the faces on china dolls in Mrs Salter’s Doll Emporium but Iris has (bold, given the period) ambitions to become a painter. She also has an admirer in the sinister taxidermist Silas Reed. At one stage, “He imagines her bladder within her, wet and pink like the inside of a peach, and then apart from her, dried out and white like a crisp pig’s ear.” 

Macneal refreshingly portrays Iris as neither saintly nor wilful (the usual options open to heroines of historical fiction). Instead, she resembles a modern woman in her desire to exceed expectations for her life without abandoning those she loves and must, to an extent, leave behind. 

Macneal’s London is vividly rendered: all rosy nipples, beads of blood from cracking the backs of fleas, and strawberries pickled in sugar. Like Angelica Neal, the heroine of Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, Iris has an appetite for confectionery. In her case, it is toffee caramels, and reading this novel is a little like gorging on sweets. The Doll Factory is a page-turner, make no mistake, but this is a rare instance when readers might have preferred the writer to slow down. Macneal writes wonderfully pithy descriptions but they are occasionally not given enough bandwidth, sacrificed to a fairly breathless plot. 

Some of the characterisation is a little overripe and the last third of the book suffers from Iris having her agency somewhat blunted. But these seem like peevish quibbles when the prose is this captivating and the story is so engrossing. Macneal also powerfully explores the ways in which a woman in the past might have been obliged to “encourage and discourage, so as not to lead to doubts of her purity and goodness but not make the men feel snubbed”. 

This review originally appeared in the Evening Standard