She asks Louis to provide her with art lessons, and he acquiesces, with Iris painting in secret. Iris encounters the Pre-Raphaelite artist, Louis Frost, who wants Iris to model for him, and which provides Iris with the opportunity she has been seeking to escape her suffocating life and social class and, realise her dreams. For the lonely Silas, it is to mark the start of an all encompassing obsession that is to become increasingly delusional as in his mind, Iris feels as he does. It is 1850, the year of the Great Exhibition, and Iris has what is for her an inconsequential encounter with the odd and strange Silas, a troubled taxidermist with his shop of curiosities, visited by the medical profession and artists. Life has not been easy for the sisters, Iris has ambitions to be an artist, but is not supported by her family in this. Iris and her sister, Rose live humdrum lives painting dolls for the laudanum addicted Mrs Salter. She writes an atmospheric and beautifully constructed story of art, ambition, a deranged obsession, love and horror, amidst the poverty, class divisions and entrenched inequalities, squalor, culture, scientific developments, and the prevalent social norms and attitudes of the time, such as the way women were treated. This is an unforgettable piece of chilling and gothic historical fiction, the debut from Elizabeth Macneal, set in the Victorian era. I have given an honest unbiased review in exchange * * Thank you to Netgalley and Pan Macmillan for my ARC. There were certain parts of the book that involved animal cruelty, which for me personally, is really difficult, and I therefore had to skim through these particular parts, but that said, it was a well written debut novel featuring art, romance, obsession and possession, and was ultimately a dark but gripping read. This is a richly dark and gothic book, with Silas’s creepy obsession becoming ever more frightening as the story evolves and picks up pace. This is London 1850, and a crowd of people are watching the construction of the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, and it’s here that Iris has another meeting (albeit very fleeting) - his name is Silas, (a taxidermist by trade) - for Iris this is a meeting that’s immediately forgotten - but for Silas this is the beginning of an obsession that knows no limits - Iris will be his, of that he is certain, and in his own little world, he believes that she feels the same way too. When she meets pre- Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, and he asks her to model for him, she agrees, on condition that he teaches her to paint professionally.
Iris dreams of being an artist, expressing herself on canvas, giving vent to her talents, rather than spending long hours of monotony painting dolls faces. Richly evocative of Victorian London, ‘The Doll Factory’ revolves around Iris, who together with her sister Rose, works for the cruel, laudanum addicted Mrs Salter.
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