![]() ![]() As Perry said when I interviewed her, also for Publishers Weekly, she wrote the book as a "direct and unapologetic comment on our times," particularly but not exclusively the shootings and refugee crises unfolding as she drafted it. As Perry imagines her, Melmoth is at once terrifying and pathetic, full of longing and the loneliness of one cut off from all companionship by her guilt. ![]() After denying that what she saw was God, she is cursed to wander forever, seeking out the wicked and bearing witness in the hopes that doing so will gain her redemption. Her Melmoth a specter that, folk tales tell, was among the women who glimpsed the risen Christ. Perry's novel is very loosely inspired by Charles Maturin’s intricate 1820 novel, Melmoth the Wanderer, but she makes the material triumphantly her own among other things, she reinvents Maturin's male Melmoth as a female figure. As I said when I reviewed it for Publishers Weekly last year, "the successor to Perry's 2016 The Essex Serpent is an unforgettable achievement." Beginning with a mysterious death and an even more mysterious folder of material, it explores human evil and complicity, the power of witness, and the ways we do and do not forgive ourselves for our wrongdoing. ![]()
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