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The Scarlet Rider
Gaining much richness from Lucy Sussex's own research into the identity of the elusive Mary Fortune, an Australian writer of mysteries who anticipated Conan Doyle in many ways, The Scarlet Rider follows Melvina "Mel" Kirksley into her first job after university. As a researcher for Roxana Press, an all-woman publishing firm specializing in fiction, her first assignment is to find out who wrote The Scarlet or, a Mystery of the Gold-Diggings.
The mystery novel was serialized anonymously in twenty-nine issues of an obscure outback journal in the 1860s. It is a major historical literary find, and Roxana Press will be the first to publish it in book form - provided it can identify the author, and provided the author is a woman.
As Mel dives into the project, unexpected friction develops with her lover, a medical student who is home all too seldom, and with her best friend, whose fragile health keeps her on welfare. Mel thought they'd be happy for her; instead, they seem to resent her new income and interest. But pressing on, consulting her elderly aunt and a helpful librarian, she solves an acrostic in the novel's dedicatory poem to come up with the name..."Melvina." Mel begins to feel a spiritual connection to this fascinating and elusive woman and even to encounter her in ever more realistic dreams.
Who is the rider, and who is the ridden? Is Mel being possessed by the Victorian Melvina? It begins to look that way as Mel's love affair ends, her friend betrays her, her aunt dies, and she is suddenly homeless. Ahead lie thorny questions of gender, race, and new romance.
Or is Mel the rider - entering into a new and strongly independent life, becoming the Mel she was perhaps always meant to be, thanks to the increasingly powerful intervention of a spirit from another time?
The mystery novel was serialized anonymously in twenty-nine issues of an obscure outback journal in the 1860s. It is a major historical literary find, and Roxana Press will be the first to publish it in book form - provided it can identify the author, and provided the author is a woman.
As Mel dives into the project, unexpected friction develops with her lover, a medical student who is home all too seldom, and with her best friend, whose fragile health keeps her on welfare. Mel thought they'd be happy for her; instead, they seem to resent her new income and interest. But pressing on, consulting her elderly aunt and a helpful librarian, she solves an acrostic in the novel's dedicatory poem to come up with the name..."Melvina." Mel begins to feel a spiritual connection to this fascinating and elusive woman and even to encounter her in ever more realistic dreams.
Who is the rider, and who is the ridden? Is Mel being possessed by the Victorian Melvina? It begins to look that way as Mel's love affair ends, her friend betrays her, her aunt dies, and she is suddenly homeless. Ahead lie thorny questions of gender, race, and new romance.
Or is Mel the rider - entering into a new and strongly independent life, becoming the Mel she was perhaps always meant to be, thanks to the increasingly powerful intervention of a spirit from another time?
350 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 1996
21 people want to read
About the author
Lucy Sussex
82 books17 followersLucy Sussex's books include Blockbuster! Fergus Hume and The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, which won the 2015 Victorian Community History Award, Women Writers and Detectives in the Nineteenth Century and Saltwater in the Ink: Voices from the Australian Seas. She has a PhD from the University of Wales and is an honorary fellow at La Trobe University. Her forthcoming book is Outrageous Fortunes.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 20, 2018
A writer is writing. She is selecting the right words to tell her story. This is a tricky and even dangerous business, for vengeance does not mean justice, negligence does not mean murder, and not even the title “orphan” is transparent. In short, words have consequences, and, if Mel can prove that the author of The Scarlet Rider was a woman, then that will have consequences too.
A recent arts graduate, Mel is so desperate for a job she agrees to a seemingly impossible task: identify the author of an anonymous novel serialised in a small town newspaper during the 1860s. But, drawing on a memory of her childhood, she makes an almost immediate breakthrough. In her young life, Mel has already seen more than her share of tragedy, so maybe that's why the story affects her so personally. But as the coincidences begin to add up, she is forced to consider an alternative explanation.
“I felt like a huntress early in my search, but Geraldo reversed the chase, in the Fox and Hounds, making me prey, the creature hunted. He lost me, but there's someone else in pursuit, who's put an a in “hunted”, making me feel haunted...”
In Melbourne, as conjured by Lucy Sussex, a busy traffic intersection can be transmuted into the gold and glass of an antique mirror. Antique mirrors,meanwhile, pack a wicked punch. Treasures may be spied in op shop windows, statues may offer comfort, libraries and archives are repositories of the most interesting people imaginable, any of whom might well be a medium. In such a milieu, it is no great step to accept presences lurking behind one and influencing one's actions. Yet, are they benign, merely wanting the truth to out, or inimical to the living?
Exquisitely written and as carefully constructed as a Victorian acroustic, The Scarlet Rider is a rare find indeed. Taking on Australian history—a notoriously duplicitous beast—and making it relevant to an Australian present is something few genre writers would dare and fewer still succeed in. For such weighty material, The Scarlet Rider dances. This is due in no small part to how it dramatises the process of research, with verbal fencing matches, last-minute dashes across the city to make connections or retrieve a precious manuscript, and of course, the friction between Mel's growing obsession (and her growing confidence and self-respect) and her friends from university, with whom she shares a squalid apartment.
“They kissed, and Mel smelt old wood pulp in the fluffy hair, which was almost the same shade as May's skin, both being a sallow, jaundiced colour suggestive of decaying paper. Mayzee was an invalid, but Mel was still half-inclined to ascribe her colouring to the paperbacks she loved.”
Sheer gothic grotesquerie. But even here, we must be careful of words. “I never knew 'research' was a synonym for 'hanky-panky'.”
Sussex is known for her historical and literary non-fiction, editing and reviews, as well as fiction. Her only adult novel to date (though she has written severally for young adults), The Scarlet Rider won the Ditmar Award upon its first release and, to my mind, is as perceptive and relevant today. Contrary to popular belief, not all research can be conducted on the net and I cannot believe the prospect for arts graduates has improved. Above all, the search for origins has grown no easier and requires no less courage.
To further explore Sussex's ouvere, I would recommend her collections of shorter fiction, with an eye to such gems as “La Sentinelle” (another Ditmar and Aurealis winner, showcasing her ability to enchant the present with history) and the chilling “The Revenant”, (which makes one think that perhaps Mel got off easy in her encounters with the dead). But The Scarlet Rider is the point not only to begin or expand your appreciation of this author, but of an overlooked fragment of time.
A recent arts graduate, Mel is so desperate for a job she agrees to a seemingly impossible task: identify the author of an anonymous novel serialised in a small town newspaper during the 1860s. But, drawing on a memory of her childhood, she makes an almost immediate breakthrough. In her young life, Mel has already seen more than her share of tragedy, so maybe that's why the story affects her so personally. But as the coincidences begin to add up, she is forced to consider an alternative explanation.
“I felt like a huntress early in my search, but Geraldo reversed the chase, in the Fox and Hounds, making me prey, the creature hunted. He lost me, but there's someone else in pursuit, who's put an a in “hunted”, making me feel haunted...”
In Melbourne, as conjured by Lucy Sussex, a busy traffic intersection can be transmuted into the gold and glass of an antique mirror. Antique mirrors,meanwhile, pack a wicked punch. Treasures may be spied in op shop windows, statues may offer comfort, libraries and archives are repositories of the most interesting people imaginable, any of whom might well be a medium. In such a milieu, it is no great step to accept presences lurking behind one and influencing one's actions. Yet, are they benign, merely wanting the truth to out, or inimical to the living?
Exquisitely written and as carefully constructed as a Victorian acroustic, The Scarlet Rider is a rare find indeed. Taking on Australian history—a notoriously duplicitous beast—and making it relevant to an Australian present is something few genre writers would dare and fewer still succeed in. For such weighty material, The Scarlet Rider dances. This is due in no small part to how it dramatises the process of research, with verbal fencing matches, last-minute dashes across the city to make connections or retrieve a precious manuscript, and of course, the friction between Mel's growing obsession (and her growing confidence and self-respect) and her friends from university, with whom she shares a squalid apartment.
“They kissed, and Mel smelt old wood pulp in the fluffy hair, which was almost the same shade as May's skin, both being a sallow, jaundiced colour suggestive of decaying paper. Mayzee was an invalid, but Mel was still half-inclined to ascribe her colouring to the paperbacks she loved.”
Sheer gothic grotesquerie. But even here, we must be careful of words. “I never knew 'research' was a synonym for 'hanky-panky'.”
Sussex is known for her historical and literary non-fiction, editing and reviews, as well as fiction. Her only adult novel to date (though she has written severally for young adults), The Scarlet Rider won the Ditmar Award upon its first release and, to my mind, is as perceptive and relevant today. Contrary to popular belief, not all research can be conducted on the net and I cannot believe the prospect for arts graduates has improved. Above all, the search for origins has grown no easier and requires no less courage.
To further explore Sussex's ouvere, I would recommend her collections of shorter fiction, with an eye to such gems as “La Sentinelle” (another Ditmar and Aurealis winner, showcasing her ability to enchant the present with history) and the chilling “The Revenant”, (which makes one think that perhaps Mel got off easy in her encounters with the dead). But The Scarlet Rider is the point not only to begin or expand your appreciation of this author, but of an overlooked fragment of time.
October 31, 2013
Interesting and ambitious book.
Sadly doesn't quite hold together at the end. Also suffers from a very 90s style of handling of some of it's themes, the concepts and language have moved on a lot since then.
Worth a read if you like explorations of stories within stories, mysteries, feminism, history or a sort of proto-magical realism, I think.
Don't get me wrong here, I really enjoyed this book and it is good, but it's a little dated and not nearly as amazing as Sussex's short stories I have read (so I had very high expections).
Sadly doesn't quite hold together at the end. Also suffers from a very 90s style of handling of some of it's themes, the concepts and language have moved on a lot since then.
Worth a read if you like explorations of stories within stories, mysteries, feminism, history or a sort of proto-magical realism, I think.
Don't get me wrong here, I really enjoyed this book and it is good, but it's a little dated and not nearly as amazing as Sussex's short stories I have read (so I had very high expections).
July 20, 2015
Standard Ticonderoga Disclaimer: We re-published this book because we loved it!
July 20, 2015
Standard Ticonderoga Disclaimer: We published this book because we loved it!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews