Published in paperback 20th April 2020 (first published September 2019) by Raven Books.
Read April 2020.
Hester Why is on the run from her last position as lady's maid in a well-to-do household in London, where her jealously led to tragedy.
She has taken up a position at the remote Moroven House in Cornwall, as the nurse to a partially paralysed and almost completely mute old lady called Miss Pinecroft, where she hopes to escape her past.
But Moroven House has a sinister history. Forty years ago, after her family having been ravaged by consumption, Miss Pinecroft moved here with her father to undertake a revolutionary experiment to find a cure for the disease that had brought them so much grief.
Dr Pinecroft housed a group of consumptive former convicts in the cliffs under the house in the hope that the sea air would relieve their suffering and bring about a cure. But his experiment did not end well and only brought further tragedy to the lives of himself and his daughter.
What happened in those caves all those years ago and why is Miss Pinecroft obsessed with silently guarding the collection of china that is housed at Moroven House? What is she afraid of?
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After thoroughly enjoying Laura Purcell's terrifying debut The Silent Companions, I couldn't wait to get started on her latest book, Bone China. And, dear reader, it did not disappoint!
The secretive Hester Why, on the run from her dodgy past, thinks she has successfully hidden herself away in a new position in the wilds of Cornwall. But it is not long before we realise that she may have actually jumped out of the frying pan into the fire, because things are not quite as they seem at Moroven House. There are whispers of strange beings in Hester's new home, namely fairies and pixies, that Hester is quick to dismiss as superstitious nonsense, but there is no denying that something is not quite right here - be it stemming from the supernatural, or by human design - and the house itself is extremely creepy and filled with rather odd residents.
As Hester begins to wonder whether she has made the right decision in taking up the position as Moroven House, we are suddenly whisked back 40 years to the circumstances surrounding the experiment of Dr Pinecroft and his daughter - and from then on, the story moves back and forth between Hester's tale and the doomed experiment from the past.
This is wonderful stuff - atmospheric, chilling, tense and exciting - and we are never quite sure how much is real or the work of imagination. The remote setting, on the edge of the cliffs, and in the dark damp caves below, is terrifyingly perfect. No spoilers from me, but Bone China is every bit as scary as The Silent Companions, and it kept me completely spellbound from the first page to the very last.
As a side note, I have also listened to the audio versions of both The Silent Companions and Bone China, and they are fabulous too.
Laura Purcell is quickly becoming my go to author for terrifying historical fiction and I can't wait to make a start on her second book, The Corset, which I hope will tide me over until her new novel The Shape of Darkness is published in January next year!
From the cover of the book:
Consumption has ravaged Louise Pinecroft's family, leaving her
and her father alone and heartbroken.
But Dr Pinecroft has plans for a revolutionary experiment:
convinced that sea air will prove to be the cure his wife and children needed,
he arranges to house a group of prisoners suffering from the same disease
in the cliffs beneath his new Cornish home.
Forty years later, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House to take up a
position as nurse to the now partially paralysed and almost entirely mute
Miss Pinecroft. Hester has fled to Cornwall to try and escape her past,
but she soon discovers that her new home may be just as dangerous as her last.
About the author:
Her first novel for Raven Books The Silent Companions won the WHSmith Thumping Good Read Award 2018 and featured in both the Zoe Ball and Radio 2 Book Clubs. Other Gothic novels include The Corset (US title THE POISON THREAD), Bone China and The Shape of Darkness (2021).
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