Joined in 2023 
82 
63 About this deal
The story starts with scenes of a chaotic household in 1914 and really sets a frantic tone of what is about to come. All seems normal on the surface but scratch a little deeper and there's more to the picture than meets the eye! An excerpt from another letter, sent four days before he committed suicide, follows a similar theme: Aunt" Adelia, a wealthy widow who has "taken the family under her wing," helping them manage economically while consistently proving an unwanted, disruptive presence AJ West has gone and taken one of my favourite subjects, actually two things to read about, and woven a fascinating and gloriously gothic tale.
Regular visitors to my blog know that I read a lot of cozy mysteries, mysteries and historical fiction. I tend to shy away from ‘ghost stories’ or anything paranormal. I’m a scaredy-cat, honestly – I don’t sleep well after reading or watching anything scary. But I saw a blurb about AJ West’s The Spirit Engineer on Facebook and was intrigued. And so I went down the rabbit-hole. West himself is personable and charming online (I’ll be posting an interview with him soon) and as soon as I saw that The Spirit Engineer was available on Netgalley, I jumped on the Request button and even though I did receive an ebook from the publisher, I also ended up purchasing a signed hardcopy for my bookshelves (it’s a gorgeous book). A spooky tale of frustrated ambition, hidden loyalties, and desperation, told with wit, charm and devastating twists. A gothic novel that also manages to make you laugh, even if you shouldn't’ Jonathan Harvey, playwright To those in the mainstream, they were shysters and con merchants trading in the misery of the bereaved.
CAREER
William was the oldest of seven children. I managed to find a list of his s iblings, which are verified by the family: The Spirit Engineer opens in the early 20th Century with a family in turmoil and consistently short on funds: This is barely a reflection of my conversation with Cathryn who has been generous and understanding of my creative process. I think it’s fair to say the family have been delighted to find some new evidence of Kathleen’s fascinating story but are, at the same time, surprised to discover that the kind, fun, uncomplicated woman they knew and loved was part of a foggy and emotionally-charged story of duplicity, worldwide fame, infamy, derision, adulation and, ultimately, suicide. How does it feel, to see a dying child? One does not feel at all for there is nothing in the mind to make sense of it. Nothing, but one's own death.”
See the public records image below and the details copied below for clarity. Readers of my historical novel The Spirit Engineer will note that the fictional family is a complete facsimile of the family in real life, even down to Rose, their ‘general servant’. There is a good idea for a book in The Spirit Engineer. Unfortunately, I found that precious little about it landed for me.
What you need to know before your trail
In any case, it’s just a sad-feeling book in many respects. But it’s also a masterclass in atmosphere, unreliable narration, limited perspective, deft characterisation, quiet horror and slow-building tension. There’s a weight of terrible inevitability to the final denouement, the revelations losing none of their power despite the fact they should have been obvious throughout. Anyone who follows me will know that more often than not I’m let down or left deflated by an ending. Impatient with a need for closure that I often don’t get…I am thrilled to say this ending took me by the hand, slapped me round the face several times only to give me a gentle kiss goodbye. An absolute dazzler of an ending. William was, by all accounts a somewhat eccentric, socially awkard man, in spite of his aloof tone in his books and articles. His contemporarties speculated that his suicide came as a result of stress, brought on by his apparent fear of public speaking (he was due to embark on a world tour at the time of his death). Correspondence with a member of his family states: A spooky tale of frustrated ambition, hidden loyalties, and desperation, told with wit, charm and devastating twists. A gothic novel that also manages to make you laugh, even if you shouldn't.’ JONATHAN HARVEY, PLAYWRIGHT The Spirit Engineer is fabulously written, fast-paced & palpitation inducing, particularly in the latter third of the book. For me, the ending was so brilliantly & cleverly done, it overwhelmed me so much that it reduced me to tears. Absolutely outstanding!
A stunning novel and worthy debut, that examines grief and guilt, that descends into madness and delusion. This might be a ghost story, but it's about the ghosts that haunt us in real life too - about loss, family and the pressures we face in the world of the living. The entire book carries an air of mystery throughout, and at times the story is quite chilling. The reader never really knows what to believe. Are ghosts and the spiritual real, or just an elaborate hoax? At times, the book reads like a psychological thriller because of this. When I first read about "The Spirit Engineer" I was a little nervous about requesting to review it by NetGalley. The fact that this book is based on a true story intrigued me and I am honored that I was chosen to read it. Thank You. The novel opens in 1914 as his wife Elizabeth is still reeling from the death of her brother who was aboard the Titanic and like many at the time found comfort in spiritualism.This fantastic debut needs to be added to everyone’s list, and being released in October, it is THE spooky book to read this Halloween.
Imagine all those lost souls trapped beyond the veil, watching us as we go about our lives. I think I should like to die a grizzly, unavenged death in a hotel room, wouldn’t you? Imagine the scandalous things one would see, floating above the bedrooms.” That, in a nutshell, is the plot. As the family becomes wealthier, William's behavior becomes more controlling and self-serving. What develops from these changes in William provides the real momentum for the novel—and I don't want to say any more for fear of letting slip key moments in the plot. The other characters, from his family, to the friends he meets along the way were so full of life - so brilliantly crafted that it feels the reader could reach out and touch them. Is it possible Kathleen worked as a medium under duress from her family? If not duress, then might we look to the social pressures placed on children born into intense religious cultures. After all, if you live in a small world, without education, without prospects or outside perspectives, might you believe entirely in the paranormal, inured to the questionable morality of your actions? Or, did she find herself a prisoner of her own dupe, knowing she was dishonest and caring or not caring as her precocious morality allowed? We will never know, and I wrote The Spirit Engineer in such a way as to preserve Kathleen Goligher’s mystery. Still, we’re not without some detail.
I’m honestly having trouble processing a lot of this, partly I think because the whole spiritualism thing is beyond gross, and sadly is not an exploitation of the vulnerable restricted to the Victorians. And, obviously, that’s not the fault of the book. But I did read it in a profound state of permanent flinch. In case, one of the strengths of The Spirit Engineer, as a careful fictionalisation, is that it can, perhaps, be more generous than reality perhaps allows. Not just to its terribly flawed, terribly damaged protagonist, but to the people around him who are, in their own ways, just as exploited as he is: by poverty, by gender, by sexuality, by age, by class, by their own losses. Kathleen, possibly, gets off more lightly than she deserves, given what she does, but it also feels like the right call, given the fact she’s a young woman from a lower class family with very few other prospects that weren’t sex work (there’s also some suggestion, as far as I can tell, from the details of Crawford’s ‘research’ that he might have sexually abused her—he was certainly very interested in ectoplasm from her vagina). The book is about psychic phenomena, mediums, religion. It is about faith, and beliefs. It is also about grief, obsession and exploitation, and about ambition, lies and deception. Oct: (AFTER DEATH) Publishing of The Psychic Structures of the Goligher Circle (John M. Watkins, London) WILLIAM’S DEATH: HIS LAST EXPERIMENT?
Great Deal 
New Comment