The Mistress of Nothing: A Novel, Kate Pullinger

David Roberts, Luxor, Decr 1st, 1840

(August 17) I read this because it won the 2009 Governor General's Award for Fiction and I got several "live" recommendations for it... but I found it banal.

Pullinger uses a familiar device: taking up the point of view of a minor member of a cast (e.g., Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, Thomas Cromwell) of a well-known story (Hamlet, the execution of Anne Boleyn) and telling the more famous story from that point of view. I don't find Pullinger so clever with it. The book is not convincing from any standpoint -- class, time period, whatever. Sarah Waters has spoiled me forever for fictitious Victorian narrators, I guess. Sally's voice is too educated and nuanced for a girl brought up in service.

The actual historical details that spawned this "novel," the bare-bones source, are interesting, but I don't think Pullinger did much with them, and, furthermore, I don't get the feeling of having "seen something" of Victorian Egypt despite this being the time and place of the story.

However, I am now mildly enthusiastic about reading Duff Gordon's letters from Egypt, and Katherine Frank's biography of her.