A Review of Imogen Hermes Gowar’s “The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock”
Multiple Reversals of Fortune
Imogen Hermes Gowar’s debut novel The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is a charming and beguiling tale of historical fiction meeting magical realism. However, despite the major clue in the title of the book, this is a novel where the magical realism angle is downplayed — one might even say that parts of the magic of the book are found in the everyday. By the same token, one wonders how much the novel adheres to historical fact, but it’s hard to say because I’m no student of the volume’s setting of London circa 1785. Still, it’s an astounding first stab at a novel — not one without minor flaws in that seemingly major characters disappear never to be seen again but in passing. Yet, it would seem as though author Gowar is treading on some new ground with this fiction.
The novel concerns a merchant named Jonah Hancock, who gets a knock at his door from the captain of one of his trading vessels one night. It turns out that the captain has lost a ship but gained a mermaid in the expedition — a small, infant-sized creature who is hideously ugly and not the kind of mermaid that one may think of. It is also very dead. Hancock and his niece Suzie go out to make a fortune selling viewings of the mermaid at coffeehouses around London. It is there that he runs into Angelical Neal, a woman who is trying to pry herself off of the attention of a bawdyhouse owner. Does Angelical leap at the chance to marry a man with a (dead) mermaid, or will she jump at the chance to marry someone younger but without as much money?
Without giving anything away, this is a reversal of fortunes story. Characters who have it good, get it bad — and then have things go good again while others have it bad. However, I felt this was really more of a plot device used to further things forward than anything speaking to the broader world. What does speak to the broader world of 2018, when this book was first published, is that the mermaid represents the desires of millennials to have something in their possession that will make them rich quick, without putting in the time or inclination towards doing something profitable that would earn them those riches. That Mr. Hancock also desires a child to replace a baby that died in childbirth along with his former wife also speaks to this notion. In a sense, a mermaid is something unnatural that substitutes either something you shouldn’t have or something you cannot.
The novel is exquisitely written. There are all sorts of florid prose in this work, but it is literary. Yet, I found the book wasn’t entirely impenetrable, although some readers may find themselves running to the dictionary to look up an antiquated word that’s being used every now and then. It’s also a bit of a page-turner. I read the last half of the book on a holiday morning, which is saying something because it is about 500 pages in length. Even though you may find the character of Angelical Neal to be a bit of a cypher — we’re never quite sure if we’re supposed to like her or not — you definitely want to see what fate ultimately befalls her in the end. Mr. Hancock, too, is someone who is likable but also the focus of some derision — he makes some very bad deals throughout the book, it seems — and is another character that we wind up wanting to know what happens to.
Where does the novel falter? It has multiple side characters who basically peel off when the book calls for them to do so. One of them is a woman named Polly who is a black bawdyhouse mate of Angelica’s who seemingly runs off at one point midway through the story never really to be seen again except for a really brief glimpse when one of the other characters is getting a comeuppance. This is a bit frustrating because it seems as though the novel doesn’t tie off many loose ends, and simply finishes because it is so darn long it just has to end somewhere. Indeed, while the outcome is known for the two main characters, Jonah Hancock and Angelica Neal, virtually everyone else’s trajectory is more or less unknown.
That all said, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is an entertaining book, and rousingly so. The fact that the characters have many different reversals plays some part of its appeal, although it does mean that they become churlish at points in the narrative in order for something bad to happen to them (which kind of goes against the nature of liking them, as you may at the novel’s outset). There’s slavish detail to history for history buffs, though magic realist lovers may find the magic realism too far muted and there not being enough of it to sustain interest. Still, there’s much to admire here if you like literary fiction that is a touch unusual. This is a book unlike any other that you might have read, and like any would-be masterpiece, it certainly teaches you how to read it. The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock offers wonderous surprises throughout its nooks and crannies. Those who like their historical fiction to be a little on the weird or outlandish side will be taken by this book, as I was. You may find yourself wishing that it never ended at all, or at least ended on some kind of note that would indicate the hint of a sequel. Nevertheless, The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock is a powerful and gripping story, and one hopes that its author has a few more parlour tricks from where this one came from.
Imogen Hermes Gowar’s The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock was published by HarperCollins on September 11, 2018.
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