The Ghost of the Mary Celeste by Valerie Martin

What is beyond

Rather than being a straightforward tale of the abandoned ship, the Mary Celeste, this novel is a collection of narratives, apparently at first only slightly connected with each other and with the missing ship. The book begins with a loving young sea captain and his wife who then shockingly drown. The second section is the diary of Sarah Cobb, the cousin of the young man who drowned in the first section, describing her life as a member of a prominent seafaring family from Marion, Massachusetts. She is concerned about her younger sister Hannah, who is attracted to the newfangled trend of spiritualism. The final scene is Sarah discovering her sister deep in a spiritualist trance. Then comes press clippings from the disappearance of the Mary Celeste, a description of an African voyage young Arthur Conan Doyle took, a description of Cornhill magazine and the story Arthur Conan Doyle published about the disappearance of the “Marie Celeste”. That section ends with a young journalist and her friend reading the spooky story. The next part is narrated by the journalist, Phoebe Grant and tells the story of her encounters with the famous spiritualist Violet Petra, a woman who survives by being a guest of various rich patronesses. That is followed by a section about Arthur Conan Doyle, now a rich skeptic touring American, hating his Sherlock Holmes fame. He becomes intrigued by Violet Petra. Little by little, the reader starts to put the pieces together.

This novel is not really about the Mary Celeste. It’s a story about telling a story, (or maybe a story about the Victorian mind). It’s a story about voices from the past.   Maybe some of these are real, maybe some aren't.  The story is fragmented, yet legitimately scary. (It gave me a nightmare.) One thing Valerie Martin is good at is building tension to a climax. She also has no compunction about killing characters off. The interesting structure, which takes a little while to comprehend, might throw off a reader who was interested in more red meat. (Like what happened to the Mary Celeste.)

Set In Motion by Valerie Martin

Beset by strange obsessive men, a young woman makes her way around New Orleans.

I am trying to read all of  Valerie Martin’s novels. This one is her first. It feels a little over designed as it is a study of three couples and perhaps two couples would have been manageable. The men are all obsessed with the narrator, a young woman who works at a welfare office. These men are all irretrievably fucked up if not certifiable and therefore the sanity of the women who stick with them is also questionable, but I think that the point. The last part of the book pretty much fell apart as it relied heavily on the journals of a madman. The journals of the madman were difficult to read.

Mostly I am interested in how Valerie Martin created those later roller coaster rides Mary Reilly and Property (in knee breeches and corsets). I also deeply admired Trespass which is more openended. Set in Motion is so openended to be completely breezy, but certain themes return – the casual sex, the woman who wants to be dominated, the sufferings of black folk, and the supernatural aspect.

One more novel to go but I believe someone swiped it from the LAPL stacks.

Alexandra by Valerie Martin

An enchanted island, a knife throwing amazon, an aging ladies man and a labyrinth


In New Orleans, a beaten down government bureaucrat meets a cool unattached bartender, the Alexandra of the title. Little does the bureaucrat realize he resembles a key figure from her past. He falls in love or lust with her and when she asks him to come to the island so she help her “best” friend with an impending childbirth, he discards his old life to say yes. After a while he figures out how to make her erotically attached to him (not so difficult really). At a certain point, the plot breaks down and I couldn’t figure out how it ends or what I was supposed to feel at the end. But the story was strangely absorbing, like a fairy tale. Vividly presented.

Property by Valerie Martin

A woman is oppressed and oppresses on an antebellum sugar cane plantation

This book is like a Rubik’s cube – artfully put together. A crude slaveowner oppresses both his genteel wife and the slave who bore his children. They are both property and they both hate him. One gets her freedom, the other doesn’t. The wife has the highest standards in the book yet is corrupted by the system. It never occurs to her that slaves could possess rights, just as it never occurs to her husband that women might have rights, though the wife desperately wants her freedom. She’s been sheltered from any other concepts besides slaves being property and using methods ranging from sadistically cruel to cruel to control them. Remarkably, the n-word doesn’t show up in this book. The narrator is extremely unsympathetic and yet she has a strong will to live, for freedom. The story is ultimately sad.

Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin

A servant whose devotion becomes all encompassing suffers true pain by witnessing the disintegration of Dr. Henry Jekyll

I really liked this extraordinarily well crafted novel, a monochromatic study of repressed feelings. The first scene is vivid and memorable – a bloody hand drawing the reader into the story and not letting you up for air. There’s not a false word in the entire book. I liked how we really got a detailed idea of a servant’s duties in Victorian England, working from sun up to sun down. This particular servant lights a lot of fireplaces. The extreme realism of the voice makes the unlikely premise – that the evil part of Dr. Jekyll has taken on a physical existence, completely believable. This narrator works very hard at being good – she completely trusts Dr. Jekyll – that’s why she can’t believe what is in front of her eyes. She won’t let herself believe that he has this capability for evil inside him.

Trespass by Valerie Martin

Two mothers – one overmothering, one undermothering, form the core of this novel about intruders. The initial “trespass” starts off small, laughably small and petty. The initial cast of characters is affluent, well educated, smug even, but then the story skillfully takes us outside the borders of this familiar world. The author portrays successive betrayals which grow increasingly deep, inhuman and shocking. I wasn’t crazy about the end, which left me saying “Huh”. However, this novel works on very many levels and I enjoyed it a lot. I highly recommend it and look forward to rereading it.