Review by New York Times Review
A novel about an admiral, his unfaithful wife and her activist friend. POP culture's fascination with Hollywood divorces Tom and Nicole, Denise and Charlie, Pamela and the man of the moment - pales when compared with the excitement almost any divorce stirred in Victorian England. So it is in Emma Donoghue's cozily lurid new novel, "The Sealed Letter," which tells a story all the more remarkable for being based on an actual case involving an admiral, his beautiful young wife and a prominent activist for women's suffrage. Helen Codrington is the wayward wife, Harry the strait-laced older husband to whom she's long refused sexual "rights." Returning to London after a stint abroad, Helen renews her acquaintance with Emily Faithfull, known as Fido, and hopes to use her old friend's house for illicit trysts. The women share a love of sensational novels and Dickens; they used to share a bed, too, when Fido's asthma attacks (normally soothed with a good cigarette) required Helen's attention. Idealistic to the point of naivete, homely Fido believes ardently in women's rights and has opened a printing shop that employs female typesetters. But she doesn't necessarily believe in adultery. When she hears Helen and a naval officer going at it on her sofa - the springs emit a "frantic squeak" - she's both fascinated and repulsed, reluctant to be drawn into this tawdry affair. Too late. One great lesson of "The Sealed Letter" is that "every friend one makes in life is a liability: ... one must keep her as a friend forever or she'll become an enemy." In the autumn of 1864, as letters fly back and forth between Fido, Helen and Helen's lover, Harry instigates divorce proceedings. As of 1857, the relaxation of certain laws significantly increased the number of English divorces, but the courts still refused to allow petitioners, respondents or even corespondents to speak on their own behalf. Thus Harry must put his trust in a handful of witnesses and knit together a case from circumstantial evidence - a stained dress, a missed telegram, Helen's visits to Fido's house and to a hotel. All this would be scandal enough, but Helen decides to fight back. And to further her cause, she reminds her friend of an "unspeakable" incident: One night when the two women were sleeping in Fido's bed, Harry attempted to rape Fido. Horrified - could she have repressed this memory? She had, after all, taken laudanum for her asthma - Fido agrees to file an affidavit attesting to its veracity, then runs away when she learns her statement will be made public. Donoghue neatly delivers the twists expected of courtroom drama, even up to the frisson-inducing final page. The game of claim and counterclaim leads the combatants to a sealed letter, backdated to the time of Fido's stay with the Codringtons, in which Harry expresses doubts about the nature of the women's relationship. This suggestion comes as no surprise to the reader, who has long since diagnosed Fido's feelings for Helen, but the threat of exposure is awful enough to shock her out of hiding and onto the witness stand. On whose behalf does she testify? Will the letter be unsealed and read aloud? And what exactly does it say? Helen isn't the only one on the edge of her seat. Heterosexual monogamy may have been the bedrock of Victorian society, but the public (then as now) watched eagerly when a marriage crumbled: "That's the devil of publicity," Harry thinks, "an airing of any kind only feeds the flame." Headlines draw spectators to the courtroom, and public opinion ensures that the results will be devastating, no matter what verdict is reached. Helen is easily branded an adulteress and Fido a "panderess"; Harry watches his daughters for signs of nymphomania. Saboteurs break into Fido's printing press, and the women of the suffrage movement begin coolly to detach her from the organization. As with Donoghue's previous novels "Slammerkin" and "Life Mask," the plot is psychologically informed, fast paced and eminently readable (it compresses the timeline of actual events). Yet some narrative elements borrow too much from the 19th century. Exposition often comes packaged in dialogue, where it sounds artificial: when Fido discourses on politics or the printing press, she might be speaking to a lecture hall. Donoghue also sprinkles metaphor and simile as liberally as Helen might use face powder. On one page alone, memories billow up "like genii," words make a "log-jam" in Fido's throat and "years fall away like planks splintering." Figuration may have been a technique dear to Victorian hearts, but it can tire a contemporary ear, which might then miss the simple strength of lines like "a surge of loathing so pure it reminds him of desire." Good lines there are in abundance. And in the end, "The Sealed Letter" provides both the titillating entertainment readers like Helen and Fido crave and the more sober exploration of truth, commitment and betrayal Harry might appreciate. Donoghue's sympathy for all three of her central characters emerges through intimate narration and lifts the novel out of the tabloid muck, despite the public shaming Harry, Helen and Fido experience. There is, as Fido puts it, "so much to say, and little of it speakable." Susann Cokal, whose most recent novel is "Breath and Bones," is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Spinster Emily Faithfull is a rarity in Victorian England the successful owner of a printing press and a leader in the fledgling British women's movement. But she's also naive and overly trusting (her nickname, Fido, says it all), especially when it comes to her vibrant, beautiful, and unhappily married friend Helen Codrington. After an absence of several years, during which Admiral Codrington is posted to Malta, the Codringtons have returned, and Fido finds herself entangled once again in their domestic troubles. This time, the troubles lead to a scandalous divorce case that destroys Fido's illusions and threatens nearly everything she has achieved. The versatile Donoghue, author of Slammerkin (2001) and Life Mask (2004), among other works, delivers a complex and well-executed tale based on actual people and events, drawing from newspaper accounts, legal documents, and personal papers. Readers may find themselves skimming through the chapters detailing Codrington v. Codrington, and growing impatient with Fido, but every detail of the Victorian milieu, from the private to the public realms, is just right.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2008 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Starred Review. In 1864 London, after a separation of seven years, Helen, now the wife of Vice-Admiral Codrington, bumps into her old friend Emily Faithful, now a well-known feminist and independent printer. As Donoghue (Slammerkin) deliciously unspools the twisted roots of their intimacy, Emily soon finds herself party to Helen's clandestine affair and snared in the sensational divorce proceedings that ensue (and which are based on an actual case from the period). Donoghue's elegantly styled, richly woven tale absorbs the everyday lives of Victorian women (rich, poor, working, home-bound, feminist, adulteress) and men (officer, lawyer, minister, adulterer, even an amateur detective) in a colorful tapestry of spiraling intrigue, innuendo, speculation and mystery. Characters indulge in pleasures at which Victorian novels could only hint, and which Donoghue renders with aplomb. Period details--etiquette, typesetting, dress, medical treatments, public amusements, shipping and jurisprudence--are rendered with a spare exactitude organic to the story. Donoghue's latest has style and scandal to burn. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Too bad Miss Emily "Fido" Faithfull really is so devoted. Trying to help friend Helen, she gets tangled in a divorce case that gets nastier by the minute. Based on an 1864 scandal in Britain. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In her third historical novel, Donoghue (Landing, 2007, etc.) portrays a sordid Victorian divorce that roiled the women's suffrage movement. Emily Faithfull, known to her friends as "Fido," thinks she's comfortably settled as the proprietor of the Victoria Press, which trains women as typesetters and printers, and as a respected member of England's nascent feminist leadership. But back into her life in the stifling London summer of 1864 comes the disruptive Helen Codrington, once Fido's most intimate friend, but absent for seven years in Malta, where Helen's husband was posted with the Royal Navy. The faltering Codrington marriage created an awkward breach in their friendship, and Helen claims never to have received the letters Fido sent her in Malta. Readers, however, will know this is a crock long before embittered Vice-Admiral Harry Codrington tells her that Helen mockingly tossed aside the missives with a wisecrack about lonely spinsters. The fact that Fido is oblivious to her beloved friend's manipulative, scheming ways is only the most obvious problem with a sluggish tale possessing little of the deeply imagined period atmosphere of Life Mask (2004) and Slammerkin (2001), let alone the author's usual sharp observations. The carefully drawn characters are dreary, as is the narrative, despite Helen's adulterous trysts and Fido's unjust ostracism by her feminist comrades. Even the climactic trial, complete with sleazy lawyers making insinuations about lesbian amour, is curiously flat. We would feel sorrier for Fido if she weren't so clearly self-deluded, and the adulterous Helen is a particularly uninteresting villain. A last-minute revelation, apparently meant to be a bombshell, will come as no surprise to anyone who's been reading carefully, and the sealed letter of the title proves to be an irritating red herring. Taking off from real-life characters and actual historical events has energized the author in the past, but Donoghue is just going through the motions here. Uncharacteristically dull work from one of contemporary literature's most interesting and entertaining writers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
