The World Before Us

by Aislinn Hunter

Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, fifteen-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated.

Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As a final research project--an endeavor inspired in part by her painful past--Jane surveys the archives for information related to another missing person: a woman who disappeared more than one hundred years ago in the same woods where Lily was lost. As Jane pieces moments in history together, a portrait of a fascinating group of people starts to unfurl. Inexplicably tied to the mysterious disappearance of long ago, Jane finds tender details of their lives at the country estate and in the asylum that are linked to her own heartbroken world, and their story from all those years ago may now help Jane find a way to move on.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery, Book Club, Magical Realism, Historical, Contemporary

419 pages, Hardcover

First published May 27, 2014

About the author

Aislinn Hunter is the author of six books: two books of poetry, three books of fiction and a book of lyric essays. She is a contributing editor at Arc Magazine and has contributed to numerous anthologies. She has a BFA in The History of Art and in Creative Writing from the University of Victoria, an MFA from The University of British Columbia, an MSc in Writing and Cultural Politics from The University of Edinburgh and is currently finishing a PhD in English Literature at Edinburgh. She teaches Creative Writing part-time at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and lives in Vancouver with her husband Glenn and two Border collies.

Reviews

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Things break, Jane, you ought to know that by now.'

remember the thing that was so frustrating about In the Woods?? the thing that made some people throw the book against the wall?? the thing that nearly made me give up on ms. french for good?? well, this book does it too. and unfortunately, while tana french wrote really crisp characters and tight scenes in her novel, which mitigated the frustrating thing somewhat, this one is frequently murky, particularly at the beginning before the threads start to come together, which makes that thing stand out more starkly at the end of the 400-plus pages.

it's not a bad book, but it's a little ambitious, with too little resolution. there are hints and half-answers, but my expectations for closure were largely unmet. this scene, of the protagonist's childhood trip to see the cave paintings at font-de-gaume, resonated with me at the book's end, because it summarized my experience perfectly:

What struck Jane about the caves was how difficult it was to see anything at all on the walls until the marks were pointed out. The lighting was dim to preserve the paintings and her eyes were slow to adjust. At a short railing, Marc stopped the group and gestured overhead. 'I will give you a moment,' he said. 'See what you see.' Jane scanned the convex limestone above her, the layers of rock yellow at her height but a brighter eggshell white above. There was a pool of brown to her right, but no shape she could distinguish clearly. Marc lifted a laser pointer to the brown stain and he used its red beam to trace the head, hump and chine of a bison. 'Look here.' He moved the pointer a foot to the right. 'And here.'
…

Marc stood back and let everyone take turns standing underneath the two bison. When Lewis, the last of the group, went up, Marc asked him, 'How many do you see?' and Lewis glanced up the corbelled vault of the cave and answered. 'Two? Maybe three?'

'Come close, everyone.' Marc ushered the group together. 'Look again,' he said, 'regardez.' And he passed one of the floor lights over the upper reaches of the chamber to where a dozen bison grazed along a horizontal plane. 'You were surrounded,' he said cheerfully, 'this whole time.'

or - more concisely - this sentence:

There are truths and there are the stories one wants to hear...

i wanted the story and the truth - i wanted this novel's wall to be floodlit so i could see everything i felt entitled to by that unspoken chekhovian agreement a writer makes with their readers.

all done griping now! here's the plot-stuff you have been waiting for:

at the outset, we are introduced to jane - a 34-year-old woman who is still haunted by the disappearance (in the WOODS) of lily, a five-year-old girl she was babysitting when she was fifteen. jane works for the chester museum, about to close its doors forever due to a lack of funding, which will in its last days be hosting an awards ceremony featuring a lecture by william eliot, who happens to be the father of the missing girl and also jane's first crush. amidst all the half-packed boxes of exhibits on their way to new homes and her apprehension about meeting william again, jane is plagued both by her memories of that day and her growing obsession with the 1877 case of n- a woman who set out one day from the whitmore hospital for convalescent lunatics and went missing in the exact same place as lily. william's research into victorian plant hunters and jane's findings from the whitmore incident overlap in places, spurring her on even further in her quest to get to the truth of n's disappearance. but despite this coincidence of scholarly overlap and parallel research paths, this is not a collaborative effort - jane's investigation remains a solitary one. jane's therapist tells her at one point:

'Grief is different for everyone.' Later he amended the statement: 'Actually, what you have is not grief, it's more like sorrow. You're sorry that this happened to Lily, and sorry that it happened to you. Grief can be shared,' he said gently. 'What you have in common with Mr. Eliot is more like guilt. And that is always individual.'

and while it is individual, she is not exactly alone.

throughout the book, unbeknownst to jane, she is surrounded by a number of ghosties - spirits without names who follow her around, seeing what she dreams, reading over her shoulder - knowing they are connected to her and to her research but not knowing how, trying to remember who they were through the past she uncovers. the novel follows the spirits, jane's travels, the past events at the madhouse and the nearby house, and jane's own memories. the ghosties are referred to by their attributes, "the one who doesn't speak," "the theologian," "the poet," etc, and eventually will be revealed for who they were and where they fit into the story, but too many of them are inconsequential bit players, and combined with all the other character-heavy storylines, there are just too many people and too many of them are just hanging about, weighing down an already crowded narrative.

but there are definitely some high points: the sweetness of an unexpected relationship, the sourness of the reader learning what jane's former boyfriend was thinking while they were having sex, the memory of her crush on william, the "invisible cities," the poet's cut-off recitation in the madhouse - there are a lot of lovely and memorable scenes. i just wish there was more resolution, and a less meandering narrative overall.

but fluttering!

come to my blog!

[Margitte · Rating 3 out of 5]

The blurb describes the plot, or essence of this book perfectly. I won't repeat it.

Three parallel stories are intertwined when thirty-four-year-old Jane Standen decides to research the disappearance of a woman, only known as N, in the 1870s. It happened in the same vicinity where a young girl vanished around 1992 from the face of the earth when Jane was fifteen years old. Jane was Lily's babysitter at the time. Although she was not blamed for the incident, Jane felt responsible and ultimately distanced herself from society by becoming an archivist at a museum that is imminently closing down.

As she works through the archived documents, i.e. log books of an asylum, a noble woman's diary, journals, old letters and photographs, she gets to know the people who played a role in the disappearance of N. Unknowingly to Jane, the souls of these people are revived as a result of her research and they come back into her life as ghosts. They hang around her as the narrators, observing how she is struggling to cut her ties with her own troubled past in which relationships were as clinical cold as her memories of her own childhood.

My opinion: Although the prose is exceptional, lyrical in many instances, and each of the three stories have distinct merit on their own, the combination was, in my humble opinion, too ambitious. It resulted in too many characters to keep track of in a narrative that jumped from the one story to the next all through the book, often on the same page. Too many sub stories included.

Combining an almost Jane Austen-kind-of-tone to a modern romantic drama, did not work well for me. There are just too many elements to absorb in one reading. I missed a continuance of some sort of drama, since it was constantly interrupted to move between the different time periods. It felt complicated instead of flowing along in a unique rhythm of prose. The reader struggles along with the characters to find the ending. Messy, my dear Watson!

It is a book that can be considered by several interest groups of which ghost lovers is one. There are romantic moments, historical elements, such as the old historical homes and the people who populated them, as well as modern day dramas present. However, the book is probably aimed at the more serious literary circles, and not meant as a quick fix for historical fiction readers.

The lives of the patients in the asylum was excellently captured. It had that One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest- compassionate element to it. Even the mine workers who got lost in the mines in Chile a few years ago and was rescued after many many days, made an appearance as a sideline to Jane's own story, although it was presented in a slightly different form.

The possibility is explored that history repeats itself, the past dictates the present, and prescribe the future. Alternatively history is never complete and repeat itself in circles. Sort of.
The ending... well....no. Too lame, sorry.

The combination of so many different issues, story lines, as well as genres ended up being confusing. But it differs from reader to reader of course. I did not have the urge to read every single word. Boredom from to time drove me to throw the book aside after the first two hundred pages. Speed reading was a second choice through the middle sixty pages. It just totally lost me at some point. No interest remained whatsoever. Truth is, some readers get it and others don't. I didn't. The ghosts were the most confusing element of all. They were all over the place. Repeating scenes, annoying and unconvincing.

I really loved the prose though. Each element in the book was very well executed, the ambiance of the past and present was wonderfully created. The research was excellent. The prose alone makes it a good consideration if you have time and patience to spare.

Alas, too much of a good thing. Too many pages dedicated to it. However, I loved the author's style and will consider reading her again.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had great hopes for this book but was disappointed - I know others enjoyed it but it wasn't to my taste. Some lovely descriptions and some interesting character interactions, but I found the device of the hovering group of voices overdone, repetitive and a bit precious, and found the mystery aspect lost momentum... I don't mind so much that it was never really resolved, but frankly I more or less lost interest along the way. She's a lovely wordsmith but I never felt it really came together as a story - got bogged down in its own detail.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

How have I never heard of this book until about three months ago? How have I never read it before? when it is exactly my kind of book. Layered, ambiguous, thoughtful, beautifully written, but with a strong narrative. When Jane was 15, Lily the child she was minding, vanished from a walk. The disappearance has haunted her into adulthood, shaped her decisions about work, relationships and study. Jane is obsessed with two things: a girl known only as N who disappears from the pages of history in a similar location, and William Eliot, Lily's father. When Jane meets William again after more than fifteen years it doesn't go as she has always imagined, and forces her into action. Following Jane around is a group of ghosts who talk about themselves in the first person plural and are trying to work out who they are and why they are here. If that sounds ridiculous, it isn't - I found the ghosts very moving.
Going off now to find everything else Aislinn Hunter has written.

[Magdalena · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jane was fifteen-year-old when Lily, the child she was babysitting, disappeared when they were out in the woods with the girl's father. Twenty years later is she working in a small London museum that is about to close, because of lack of funding. Jane has been researching a young girl that disappeared over one hundred years before in the same woods that Lily disappeared. Will finding out what happened to N. make Jane move on with her life?

One of the main reason for me to choose this book for my next blogging for books read was that it was compared to Possession by A.S Byatt. Sure I never thought that it would be as good, but for a moment in the first half of the book, I actually thought that I would find a book nearly as interesting. But alas, the story just wasn't that interesting. Sure the book was beautifully written, but I felt that the story dragged on and that it lacked a really good ending. I wished for more answers and frankly the mystery with the missing N. that disappeared over one hundred years ago wasn't that interesting.

Also, the spirit that narrated the story was an interesting approach, but frankly they were mostly annoying towards the end. I had rather read the book without them.

I received the book from Hogarth and from Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The World Before Us is like a cross between A.S. Byatt’s Possession and Adam Foulds’s The Quickening Maze. I was drawn to the Victorian setting and the dual story line, contrasting the mysteries of an 1870s mental asylum and manor house with the discoveries a museum employee makes in the present day. The interplay of past and present is intriguing, but there is a lot of superfluous detail and the experimental narration is off-putting. Ultimately, I was disappointed with what I hoped would become a new favorite Victorian pastiche.

Main character Jane Standen works at the fictional Chester Museum in London (perhaps based on a Victorian collection like Sir John Soane’s). Alas, the museum is closing down in two weeks, so Jane and her colleagues spend their time boxing the treasures up and preparing to move on. Jane “is a good archivist, has a willingness to navigate history, to consider its blank pages. But history is tricky. Jane thinks it is a buffer, a static place that sits obediently between now and then...History is shifty; it looks out for itself, moves when you least expect it.” This is certainly true of Whitmore Hospital and Inglewood House, two Yorkshire landmarks she researched for her graduate degree. Both places still haunt her, almost literally.

You see, Jane has a dark secret: about 20 years ago, she babysat for Lily, the five-year-old daughter of celebrated botanist William Eliot. Only 15 at the time, Jane was half in love with Eliot, but the tie between them was severed when Lily went missing at a Yorkshire grotto while she was under Jane’s care. The little girl was never found. Now, as the Chester enters its last week in existence, Jane runs into Eliot again: he’s giving a keynote lecture after winning the Chesterwood book prize (modeled after the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction) for his survey of Victorian plant hunters, The Lost Gardens of England.

Jane isn’t sure what to expect from this meeting, but she never guesses Eliot will not even recognize her. Furious that he could forget her when Lily’s disappearance is the defining moment of her life, she slaps him and quickly leaves. Dropping her cell phone back home and picking up her dog and some clothes, she leaves London for Yorkshire. Here she registers at a B&B under a fake name so she can continue her research on the Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics and poke around Inglewood House, currently undergoing restoration.

All through, Hunter has been interweaving sections describing events linking the Whitmore and Inglewood in the 1870s. Indeed, the novel opens with a visit a few of the inmates – Leeson, Herschel, and a mysterious female referred to as ‘N’ – pay to George Farrington’s manor house, documented by a chiding letter he sent to the caretakers. The peek into a Victorian asylum is eye-opening; some of the patients sound distressingly normal, like “Eliza Woodward, 22,” whose symptomatic activities include: “Disobeys her father. Invents mischief...Will go out without a bonnet...Has fits of laughing, crying and kissing people.”

There are other historical connections. For instance, Edmund Chester, the museum founder, makes a brief appearance, and his wife Charlotte is having an affair with Farrington’s brother, Norvill. Norvill gets caught up in a shooting accident involving one of the asylum inmates, and the one witness, ‘N,’ a servant girl, is sent away to secure a cover-up. This all happens very near to the grotto where Lily Eliot disappears a century or so later. As Jane continues her research into what happened at the Whitmore, using her false name to gain access to Inglewood and taking up with Blake, a 19-year-old builder, she circles closer to answers about what happened in the 1870s, but no nearer to an understanding of her own loss.

The historical encounter that inspired the novel is based on a real event: inmates from Witley Hospital, where poet John Clare was a patient, turned up at Alfred Tennyson’s house in October 1877 (an element of The Quickening Maze). Around the poles of two girls’ disappearances some 100 years apart, the novel explores loss and the sometimes treacherous workings of memory. The problem is that the novel never really goes anywhere or makes any great revelations. We learn who N is but it doesn’t seem to matter; we get the full story about Lily’s disappearance but that doesn’t seem to explain Jane any better. There is no resolution to the William Eliot debacle, and consequently no clue to how Jane will go on with her life.

Also problematic is that the novel is narrated in the first-person plural, a perspective I often enjoy but here found distracting. “Memory being what it is, we sometimes remember backwards, or sideways, or inside out,” remark the Whitmore ghosts, known by their identities in life, such as “the theologian,” “the idiot,” “the girl,” and so on. They bicker among themselves and report their observations on Jane’s behavior. In some caves in the French Dordogne, a guide said to Jane, “You were surrounded this whole time” by bison cave paintings, and the same is true for the spirits. Though there is something deliciously creepy about that statement, the overall effect of the point-of-view is to create distance from Jane.

I would have liked more scenes to be set at the Chester Museum, or in the archives in Yorkshire. Byatt’s Possession masterfully links past and present, but Hunter doesn’t quite get the balance right here. There is far too much detail about the Victorian locations, most of it superfluous to the storyline, and the lack of resolution in the present-day plot is frustrating. It’s the Canadian author’s second novel, but this felt to me very much like a debut, with the first-person plural narration marking a consciously ‘literary’ tactic that backfires. Still, for a lover of all things Victorian, it is pleasant to spend a bit of time in 1870s Yorkshire.


(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)

[Wanda Pedersen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Can you work in archives and museums and not be haunted by the past? Maybe it depends on what your own past conceals. Sometimes, when I am doing family history research, I feel like I have a cloud of ghostly companionship—perhaps even guiding me, getting me to notice certain things, pushing little thoughts into my head. Very much like the situation that Jane discovers herself in The World Before Us.

Haunted by the disappearance of a child she was minding when she was a young teen, Jane retreats into the archival world, dealing with papers and objects rather than people. In fact her ties to the world of people are rather tenuous—an absent father, a distant brother, an ex-boyfriend, her teenage crush on the father of the missing girl. Jane has gone missing too, but unlike little Lily, no one notices her absence. In fact, when Lily goes missing, no one even thinks to comfort Jane or let her know what was going on. She is as invisible as the ghostly presences which surround her.

This is the story of Jane finding herself through investigating another missing young woman, the mysterious N. who has disappeared from a Victorian asylum in the same area where Lily disappeared. By sorting out the stories of the people involved in that event, Jane finds the wherewithal to make a connection in the real world and to break out of her self-imposed exile.

Touching, well-written, rather dreamy in tone, The World Before Us shows us that there are patterns in life, which repeat, although never exactly.

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd just like to start by saying something that should be obvious; reading tastes are individual, what you might think is fantastic (little zombie children eating people in the season that arrives after fall and departs before spring) I might think is dreadful and vice versa. And honestly, I'm totally okay with that, we don't have to agree. I'm happy for you, that you found a book you enjoyed. But what makes me even happier is when I find a book I enjoy, a book that held my attention, had me thinking about the characters when I was away from them, had me completely oblivious of the editor and the author (except to notice the way she so cleverly put the words together on the page).

That's what I found with this book. This book grabbed me from the opening lines and kept me interested until the very last pages. The narration was different and I liked that, it made me think and wonder and try to figure out just what was happening with this story. Is this story narrated by a group of ghosts? Yes! When did they attach themselves to the main character? And why? Where did they come from? Why haven't they moved on? Who are they? I liked all of these questions and I liked piecing together the answers the author gives us as the story unfolds.

I loved the realism of the story, the characters, their emotions and relationships felt very authentic, even the ghosts felt authentic. I love the element of preserving the past, that's integral to this story, it resonated with me. I love things that have a history, I love old things that have been passed down through the generations. I feel lucky to have things from both sets of my grandparents. I was fortunate in claiming ownership of a box of old family photos, that no one else wanted, over twenty years ago. I recently did my own genealogy research and discovered how I was related to the people in the photos, where they lived and died and that my great-great-great grandparents and I were married in the same church one hundred years apart. There were many times when I was doing that research, learning about the lives of these relatives that I imagined them in places where we've both been, but also, looking over my shoulder encouraging me to remember them and mark down the details of their lives for future generations as well. So much of that experience is captured here in this book and I know that's part of why I loved it so much.

The pacing of the story is slow at the beginning, the story isn't predictable and doesn't get tied up neatly in a bow at the end but the storyline is unique and the writing is beautiful. The real life inspiration for this story is also interesting and the author's note talks about a man named George Steiner and his influence on her work. He said "A remembrancer is a human being who knows that to be a human being is to carry within yourself a responsibility, not only to your own present but to the past from which you have come..."

I really enjoyed this novel and would encourage others to read it as well. But only do so if you are willing to have an open mind and to use it while you're reading otherwise you might be disappointed. This isn't a predictable mystery with a nice and tidy ending. I would recommend this for readers who enjoy Susanna Kearsley's fiction and for those who can feel the ghosts of the past looking over their shoulders encouraging them to remember.

Thank you to Hogarth publishers and the Amazon Vine program for the advance reader's copy given in exchange for an honest review.

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to Hogarth, Crown Publishing, and Goodreads for the review copy. Some books are best to read blindly, and this is one, so I will not give any plot points away. I'll say this, Hunter's language is poetic, her writing is precise, and this story is excellent. I've read the comparisons to A.S. Byatt in other reviews and on the jacket cover, but that comparison is not full-proof. In fact, I had a hard time distinguishing her influences (not that I'm good at doing that). At times, it felt like she had the voice of a modern-day Dickens, but then some moments reminded me of Austen. This could be a result of the jumping time frames from the 19th Century to our current time. It's so hard to not allude to anything that happens in the book or it's unique structure, but as you read, you will know why. I didn't know anything going into this read, and I think that made it a better read for me. Here's the deal - this is an entertaining book about the uncovering of a couple of mysterious disappearances and how they are linked. For me, it was a welcomed break from the intense and challenging books I normally read and have been reading recently.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very disappointing read - maybe due to the "hype" surrounding this book. It was the Chatelaine pick for October Book of the Month. Just found it boring and difficult to get through. Didn't care much for the characters. I was hoping that all the stories would somehow "join" together but they never did....I also did not like the group of ghosts/spirits who turned up in the book and chattered mindlessly. It was a real annoyance!

[Victoria · Rating 1 out of 5]

Missing people always make for an interesting premise, so this description certainly grabs a reader. But, right from the first pages, it is evident that this is a very different sort of missing person story. The point of view for the book is definitely unique. Told from a rather formless “we,” this vague assembly of ghosts watch Jane, a museum archivist who in her spare time researches the disappearance of a young woman who went missing from the same area where twenty years earlier Jane lost the young girl in her charge while babysitting. The perspective is a bit of a turn-off - but the initial set-up does keep the pages turning.

But the odd frame for the novel lends it too vague and disconnected of a tone. The book moves through Jane’s story, the museum that is closing, the asylum and country manor, Inglewood House. And though it is nice to see the layers of history in the same locations, the link of these formless narrators have to these events and to Jane herself is not always very clear. It’s a different novel, and is difficult to feel a strong connection or interest to any of its elements.

By the conclusion, Jane uses her archival talents (as well as some outright lies) to satisfyingly resolve the mystery of 125 years earlier, but there is little else that feels resolved. Jane’s childhood crush and obsession is left oddly concluded and nothing whatsoever is revealed at the more recent mystery, nor is there any tangible reason for this group of ghosts to be so interested in Jane in particular. The romantic involvement also feels odd - and kind of gross considering the age difference. It is such a different novel, and one that while initially captures interest, by the end feels more like a waste of time because of the myriad of questions left in its wake.

[Elizabeth · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was just so hard to get into, and by page 100 I decided to just be finished with it. The sad thing is that the story itself was quite interesting. I liked learning things about the museum and the asylum.

But the narration is done by a group of spirits. And while that could have turned it into a very interesting book (I love looking into the spiritual realm) I only got confused instead. I never knew who was who, what was what, and felt lost the whole way through. By page 50 I started to skim and continued to lose interest. I can't finish a book that leaves me feeling so lost on the dialog.

This book was sent to me by Blogging for Books in exchange for my honest review. You can see my whole review at http://www.trenchesofmommyhood.blogsp...

[Jess The Bookworm · Rating 2 out of 5]

When Jane was 15 a young girl went missing whilst in her care. The girl's body was never been found and Jane has never found closure.

Now Jane works at a museum and finds some records relating to an old asylum where it mentions a woman "N" who went missing in those same woods, and feels compelled to investigate further.

All the while the book is narrated by the spirits of the past, which narration was quite interesting, as they follow Jane around.

I really thought that this novel had so much potential, but I was ridiculously bored. I would've given up, but I really wanted to know what happened to the missing girls and how it all tied together. Alas, I wish I had just stopped reading, as the ending was completely unsatisfying. There was no wonderful conclusion.

Prose was very pretty but the story line just didn't work as well as it could have.

[Melanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The frequent comparisons between this book and A.S. Byatt's Possession are, I believe, misguided. Although both involve dual timelines and long-hidden secrets, Hunter's book focuses on memory, and eschews satire and verbal pyrotechnics. Instead, she takes us inside the ghosts? shades? spirits? of the long-dead actors in a story connected to a long-shuttered Victorian asylum and a Victorian botanist. She shades struggle to remember who they were, and how their stories intertwined. So does archivist Jane Standen, whose dissertation included the asylum, and whose job is ending at the museum where she works is closing.

She has long been haunted by the disappearance of a girl from the asylum, known only as N, when she and two men walked to the botanist's house. The men returned; the girl did not. When Jane learns who is to speak at the gala for the museum's closing, she flees: The speaker, Jane's first crush, was the father of a little girl, Lily, who disappeared during a walk in the woods - when Jane was babysitting her. Jane goes to the village where both disappearances happened, searching for clues to the disappearance of N, and for clues to the tragedy that has defined her for many years.

An archivist preserves and sorts artifacts that keep the stories of a place and its residents alive. Some stories are more personal than others. N's disappearance might not have caught Jane's attention had Lily not disappeared. Others are less so, at least on the surface. The new owners of the botanist's house are recreating his gardens to be as they were in his lifetime.

As Jane reads the letters, journals, and logbooks, looking for clues into N's life and disappearance, the shades begin to recover their essences. As Jane begins a relationship with one of the gardeners, they also begin to remember how it felt to be alive, how their senses defined them.

The reader gets to absorb complexity in both timelines, and sees how Jane becomes more solid and complex as she assembles clues and allows the present - with risks and uncertainty - to to affect her as much as the past.

I was particularly taken by side-stories about the village and villagers, past and present, which deepened the theme of memory. One example: local miners who gather to remember their experiences as others, trapped, their stories told by the media, are in the long process of being rescued. The subterranean story illuminates the hope for salvation when the men can be brought to the surface to tell their own stories.

So, yes, this book is not Possession. Instead, it is a subtle tale of duality and memory, discovery and connection, which shines in its own, elegant, ultimately beautiful terms.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley, and this is an unbiased review.

[Andrea MacPherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggled with this book.

On the one hand, it's beautifully written and researched. I could feel Hunter's confidence in the world(s) she was creating. But on the other hand, I felt distanced from the characters throughout. Perhaps because there are ao many of them, and so many narrative threads (three distinct threads/timelines, with other varying sub-storylines).

I was ultimately not convinced we *needed* all the storylines that inhabit the narrative. While each was interesting, they did not form a cohesive whole for me. And the main plotline--Jane in current day--faltered because of it. There were also threads that felt incomplete, unresolved, most obviously the (apparent) core storyline of Jane, William, and Lily. This was where the most emotional impact and resonance could have been, but it became overshadowed.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

The theme of Aislinn Hunter's novel can be found in the plural significance of the title, which can mean the world of the past, the present, or the world to come. (Does any other word capture the past, present, and future like "before"?!) The novel is about the past holding the present hostage, while the future hangs in the balance.

One hundred years ago, at the former Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics in England, two men and one woman walk out the door, but only the men return. The woman, known only as N, remains a riddle. Thirty-four-year-old Jane Standen, an archivist at a museum that is imminently closing, has been obsessed with finding out who N is, ever since she read the logbook entries of the trio's escape. Her preoccupation with N is tied to a tragedy in her own life. When Jane was 15, five-year-old Lily Eliot went missing while in her care, in the same woods shared by the former asylum. A recent encounter with Lily's father has provoked her to run away and hide, incognito, to Inglewood, where it happened, and try to unravel the identity of N. Jane, held blameless for the little girl's disappearance, is nevertheless haunted by the past, and can't let go or move on to a full and meaningful life. She hopes that solving one mystery will put the other one at rest.

The material world here is poignant, and Hunter describes the individual pieces that Jane archives with such clarity and divination that they take on a larger meaning, such as:

"...the receipts for roses, inventories tucked into books, even sherry glasses or cigar boxes or the worn clasp on a velvet band--are enough to conjure whole lives."

Beyond the material is the invisible, a huddle of voices symbolic of a Greek chorus, but supernatural. Hunter's spiritual world represents and connects history to Jane's personal purgatory, her inertia due to memories that clamp its hands around her neck. Jane thinks history is a static place that sits between now and then, fixed and immutable. These agents of the past know better:

"History is shifty; it looks out for itself, moves when you least expect it."

Hunter's brilliant and unique device is so convincing that it feels organic. The voices are a witness to the past, and possess a vibrant presence of the collective consciousness. The past comes to bear on the present, whether we repress or deny these memories. "We feel a sense of having done this before every time, though we are uncertain whether this sense comes from the repetition of the act itself or an echo from some other point in our lives." The narrative suggests that the present is influenced by an extant presence of the past. This affects our attention to what is currently in our path, that which surrounds us. "After all, every presence has a kind of weight, something felt: moods and shifts and feelings, a steady pulse of being."

Occasionally, I wanted the author to jettison the voices and get on with Jane, whose story was the most compelling. But, as we are able to predict, the intersection of lives and former lives connect to the missing and the left behind, the visible and the hidden. Memories clot together and form a history. You can't escape it, although perceptions of the past may be unreliable. "It doesn't matter that memories can sometimes be misshapen, that there are a hundred ways to fix or lose a sense of self."

Along the way, the reader is blessed with beautiful prose, a glimpse into the lives of a privileged Victorian family--and their peccadillos--as well as events that tarnished their happiness. As a psychiatric nurse, I was also intrigued by the routines and mini-dramas of the asylum residents. In the end, all the threads come together brilliantly. The author creates a melancholy contemplation of memories, and its yoke on the present.

"It was as if we were knots in a net that could take different shapes at different times. As if we might, one day, loop back on ourselves, come so close to the past we'd be able to taste the dust of our history in our mouths."

[Anmiryam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this beautifully written and elegantly constructed novel about a woman's journey towards healing from a defining traumatic event. When she was fifteen Jane Standen's life was cut adrift in a single moment on a woodland excursion when her five year-old charge, Lily, disappears. Lily is never found, and as a result Jane is also lost, unable to do more than drift through her life in the years following the incident.

Now 34, Jane is facing the closure of the small natural history museum where she has found solace in her work as an archivist, as well as her first meeting with Lily's father since that long ago afternoon.

However, the novel doesn't open directly with Jane, but rather with the story of two men and a woman who walk away from the Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics one day in August 1877. The young woman vanishes in the same woods where Lily disappears more than a century later. Who is this girl, known only as N in the hospital's records, and what became of her? What does this Victorian era mystery have to do with Jane?

This is fiction, the answer is: everything. It is through her discovery of what really happened that long ago day, and the connections between that event and her own life, that Jane inches her way towards healing.

More than plot, I relished the precise imagery and the beauty of language that give 'The World Before Us' an atmosphere of longing, even as it throbs with hope that connecting past and present makes the world richer.

This is a book to read with a close eye to how words are used -- lost and missing are seen as subtly different despite often being used synonymously -- as well as with an eye to the sensual pleasures offered by the sentences. Symbols abound -- doors, windows, caves, forests. Characters in parallel narrative threads echo one another and there is a lovely meta-fictional twist that, for me, dropped all the pieces into place with a satisfying click in the final paragraph. A great read for lovers of A.S. Byatt's Possession (though not as densely erudite) or fans of Peter Weir's film version of Picnic at Hanging Rock (I would cite the book, but it's been so long since I read it, I can't say if it evokes a similar impression).

[Rachel Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

I waited several days before penning this review and I'm still not sure exactly how I felt about this book. The World Before Us is a conglomeration of stories that centers around Jane Standen. The story lines were actually fairly interesting for me to get into, unfortunately there is a collection of ghosts that follows Jane around and narrates is first person plural. The change in voice is jarring the first few times it happens until you get used to it and it took away from my enjoyment of the novel. I usually enjoy books where the perspective changes between characters but for some reason I never fully got into this story. Every time I put it down I had a hard time getting back into the narrative. I really wanted to like this book but I just don't think I was the right fit for it.

*I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

[MaryannC Victorian Dreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Truthfully, this almost lost me once or twice. While I thought the premise was interesting and haunting, this felt a bit slow at times and I wanted more to come forth as I read.

[Marjorie · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful blend of the past and the present and the ties between them. This book is so unique and completely one of a kind. I’ve never read anything like it. This is a hauntingly beautiful book, one that will pull you into its imaginative world. It’s breathtaking, magical and poetical – all that literature should be.

For those of you who like mysteries, there are several of them in this book. The first is the disappearance of a young child twenty years ago while in the care of 15-year-old Jane. And then there’s the mystery of a young woman who went missing over a hundred years ago, which an adult Jane is researching. But the most haunting mystery involves the fascinating ghostly beings connected to Jane. The author does a masterful job of weaving together the three time frames without any confusion as to what is happening.

This is no run-of-the-mill historical mystery. It’s layer upon layer of thought-provoking material. On some levels, it’s a light read since it’s very easy to follow. But it’s also a very deep read which you will remember long after the book is finished. It’s one of those books that I hated to see end as I wanted to stay in the world that this author had created.

This book is deserving of the highest awards presented to works of literature. The writing is glorious and I look forward to reading more work from this author.

I received this book from http://www.bloggingforbooks.org/ in exchange for an honest review.

More info: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/boo...

Author Bio: http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/aut...

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jane, the main character in “The World Before Us”, dreams for herself and for many others in her work as a researcher. She’s obsessed with her own past but also the past of those she spies on. There’s a central tragedy that happened to her when she was 15 and her search for the truth is an attempt to come to terms with what she sees as her error. She’s strangely compassionate with others’ weaknesses but intolerant of her own. Other times and other people haunt her until she can uncover their truths.

I liked the English countryside setting that alternates with Jane’s work in a London museum. The story is told with alternating trips late 19th century life in a country house and an insane asylum and the present day. Hunter’s writing is affecting and though it’s understated it’s very emotional. Her style keeps the reader off guard and constantly questioning if they’re perceiving correctly, it’s disconcerting but relatable at the same time.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC.

[Roger Brunyate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ghosts of the Vanished

First things first: Aislinn Hunter can write. One of the characters in her novel, a neglected Victorian wife, decides to devote a day to compiling what she calls a catalogue of touch.

In the end, Charlotte wrote, the catalogue was a disappointment. She'd noted the unexpected warmth of the keys taken from the maid, the cool brass of the library doorknob, the viscous quality of the honey clumped by Thomas into his younger brother's hair after a row at lunch. There was the constant swish of her skirts against her stockings, the side of her hand inching across a letter to her mother, the repeated smoothing of the raw silk of her dress. And then, almost miraculously, the bell of a purple foxglove lifted from where it had fallen to the carpet, her finger slipping gently into the satin of its cup.

If she calls that a disappointment, what more can she have been expecting? It is an amazing diversity of sensations, set down simply but precisely, with no attempt at the exotic but speaking volumes about the everyday life of a lady of her period and class.

Or again, here is the principal character, Jane Standen, recalling a memory as she goes up the steps to the London museum where she works:

Once she saw a boy of nine or ten standing on the steps and nervously glancing around, his hands twisting the straps of his backpack. When his mother came out and found him she went to hug him, but he pushed her away, wanting, Jane imagined, to have outgrown her concerns, or ashamed of his own.

Again, a clear image well described. But what makes the passage special is the stabbing acuteness of Jane's observation at the end. Oh yes, Hunter certainly can write.

I wanted to get these in as an ante, so to speak, because there is so much in this marvelous novel that I did not want to get lost in concentrating, as I feel I have to, on only one aspect of it. This will probably be the crucial element for many readers: the degree to which it is a ghost story, or some kind of fantasy.

+ + + + + +

Apparently, Aislinn Hunter, a Canadian writer and poet, spent a year or more in England working on a PhD topic about private museums in the Victorian era. You can imagine her looking into dusty archives and forgotten artifacts. It would surely be boring work until something strikes her: something so unusual or exquisite in itself, perhaps, that it suggests a story; or an unexpected connection between a name mentioned in one place and a yellowing photograph found at another. Suddenly, these are not merely names and dates, but real people who had real lives, loves, hopes, and fears. She cannot see them clearly as yet, perhaps, but they exist as potent possibilities. She has their scent in her nostrils.

Hunter's novel, The World Before Us, reflects all three elements of her real-life experience: the researcher, her research, and these shadowy figures. There is Jane Standen, thirty-four, working as an archivist in a private museum in London, preserved as a testament to its founder, a Victorian collector of curiosities from around the world. There is the research work that she is doing, tangentially connected to the museum, but really for her own interest: a study of what may have happened in the summer of 1877 when a group of two men and a girl absconded from the "Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics" in the Yorkshire Dales; the men turned up at the woodland home of a local botanist (and eventual donor to the museum) many hours later; the girl was never seen again. Hence Jane's obsessive interest. For when she was fifteen, she lost sight of a small girl that she herself was supposed to have been minding on an excursion to those same woods, and she too was never seen again. And then there are the other unseen beings: the spirits of the long-dead uncovered by Jane in her research, but whom she cannot see clearly as yet.

Novels that link two periods a century or more apart have been fairly common since A. S. Byatt's Possession. There has been at least one novel about 19th-century mental care: The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds, which was probably inspired by the same incident involving Lord Tennyson that Hunter notes as a source of her own novel. I found the research side of Hunter's book absolutely fascinating, the way that a complex web of human interaction may be spun partly from fact and partly surmise. But what makes this unique is the presence of the cloud of ghostly witnesses, who serve almost as the principal narrators. They have, at first, no names, because they are still trying to recover their identities. "This, after all, is what we have been after—bits and pieces of stories we've lived, images that sail back to us as well enter a room." Hence the way they congregate around Jane in the museum, as she seems on the verge of restoring to them at least part of the identity they have lost. I'll give one more longish quotation, partly to define these ghostly characters, partly to demonstrate how effective they are at physical description. And now, in retrospect, to acknowledge how almost all the images noted here on page 27 will return as structural elements in the remaining 325 pages of the novel:

Ask us what shape certainty takes and we will all point to a different corner of the museum: to the pendulum of the long-case clock, to the black stones of the birds' eyes, to the teacups in the upper gallery, to books, locks of hair, dress silk, to the computer in Jane's office, or the cabinet of milk-weed and wild strawberry glass models made in a factory between wars. We do not know how to recover our histories, to identify what or whom we loved. We cannot see ourselves except as loose human forms—like those caught moving down the street in the museum's early Victorian photographs, figures whose blurred shapes become clearer the longer you look at them. We only know that we are drawn to certain objects, places and people, and that we are bound to Jane like the Thale butterflies in the natural history hall—pinned to the boards in their long glass cases.

So does it all come together? I would have to say, almost but not quite. As an intellectual idea, absolutely. Strongly, too, in the character of Jane, who breaks out from the passive archivist mold and actually makes things happen around her. The gradual emergence of the Victorian story is also interesting, with its twists of adultery, sexual deviance, and death, although I never quite felt I was in the same room with those characters. I was a little disappointed that while Jane ties up the loose ends of the old mystery very neatly, she never quite manages to solve her own. But those are small matters compared to Hunter's marvelous writing throughout and unusual choice of setting and plot.

For most readers, I think, it will come down to how you respond to the ghosts. Fantasy is not a literary genre that I am drawn to, and there were times, I admit, when I was waiting for Hunter to get back to her flesh-and-blood characters. But when I think of the ghostly world as a metaphor for both historical research and fiction, I am considerably impressed. And there were moments towards the end that became quite moving as the ghosts recapture pieces of their real identity. I am in awe at the quality of so many female Canadian novelists, and this book made me think of some of the earlier work of Jane Urquhart, such as The Whirlpool, which is haunted by the spirit of John Keats, or Changing Heaven, in which the ghost of Charlotte Brontë appears as a major character. And that is intended as a high compliment—to both writers.

[Chaitra · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think I should start with mentioning that I'm grateful that I am done with it. I was reading it before my move and then I had to re-checkout the book from my current local library and then I wasn't really in the mood to read it. It did go faster the second time I gritted my teeth and started it, but I wasn't really sold on the book itself.

It's written in first person plural, the plural representing the collective voice of the ghosts that surround Jane, the main character. It's an affectation I really like. The story itself has two parts to it. Jane, fifteen, is minding a little girl when she (the little girl) gets lost in the woods and is never found. Affected by this tragedy, Jane goes into archival studies, focusing on a mental institution near the woods and is snagged by another disappearance - that of a girl, in company of two other patients. Through this, she is followed by ghosts who hope that her work will lead them to remember their names and thereby finding some sort of fulfillment.

It's a fine premise, but it goes on a bit too long. There is no satisfactory ending to one of the stories, and it's unclear what, if anything, Jane has achieved at the end. We don't really know if the process was cathartic for Jane, because the book ends rather abruptly, almost as if the author just wanted to get it over with. It's also unclear what the ghosts are looking for now, since their objectives have been mostly met with, but they are yet to vanish. The abrupt conclusion comes along with a very prolonged opening, when Jane seems like a very indecisive, and emotionally immature person. This characteristic of hers is not unreasonable, it's a bad day for her. Only because the book takes very long to get through this day did I feel like yelling at her, in conjunction with the ghosts, to just get on with it already.

It is not badly written. It is a fascinating subject for the most part. It is, however, awkwardly paced, and the ending feels like an anti-climax. But most importantly, for me, after two and a half months of reading it is finally done.

[Alysa H. · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing in this novel is absolutely lovely. Gorgeous and evocative. Aislinn Hunter has a knack for atmosphere and for bringing history to life, much like her archivist and historian characters themselves do. I felt pulled into the 19th century, and also into the modern-day headspace of the distressed, 30-something Jane Standen as she tries to pull herself together after upsetting events related, partly, to an unresolved tragedy that occurred when she was a teenager.

The interplay between the 19th and 21st century parts was... interesting. However, the idea was better than the execution, because not only does one of the two central mysteries of the plot go entirely, frustratingly unresolved -- like real life, yes, but unsatisfying here -- the book is actually narrated by a group of spirits. I had a hard time with this, with all the "We" and the flighty, airy tangents. The spirits did say a few poignant things, and I get that the author was trying to capture a sense of metaphysical continuity across history and time, a sense of literal witnesses to the small moments in the histories of human life. But: for the most part I simply did not dig it. Whenever the spirits were "talking", I just could not wait to get back to the real story.

I must say, I also nearly gave up at one point, after a scene wherein Jane slaps someone. Can't say more without spoilers, but let's just say that The Slap didn't ring true to character, and had the whiff of "hysterical female" about it. Ironic, considering what else the book has to say about that sort of old-fashioned gendered diagnosis.


** I received a Review Copy of this book via NetGalley **
(2015 Hogarth edition)

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I picked this up, I wondered if "before" meant geographically or chronologically. While I came to a conclusion by the end of the book, I won't share it here. I think this is one the reader must come to herself. I really loved this book. It's a bit of a ghost story, but not in the traditional sense. But it's also about growing up, living with trauma, sleuthing, archiving, and the importance of names.

I haven't made it a habit to share quotes in the past, but two here merit sharing. "How lovely, how lovely it is to be seen." And, don't skip the acknowledgements at the end, or you'll miss my favorite. From George Steiner: "A remembancer is a human being who knows that to be a human being is to carry within yourself a responsibility, not only to your own present but to the past from which you have come. A remembancer is a kind of witness through memory."

I read an Advance Reader Copy, and this won't be available until March, 2015, but put this book on you "To Read" list. There's plenty here for book group discussions, with the added bonus of just being a really, really enjoyable book.

[Karen M · Rating 5 out of 5]

Originally reviewed on One More Page...

[I received a copy of this book from its Canadian publisher Random House Canada. This does not affect my opinion of the novel.]

To be honest, I don’t even know where to begin my review of this book. The World Before Us immediately captured my attention with its opening scene and just kept getting more and more interesting as the book progressed. While, looking back, I wish we could have gotten more of an answer when it comes to a certain part, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book to anyone who fits in the “read if” category below.

The book starts with a mysterious “we” arguing on how to start the novel. With “near infinite” ways to begin, they are having trouble settling on one particular way. They eventually decide to start with Jane, “because our stories are tied to hers and everything depends on what she does with them” (1*). The narrators then take the reader head first to a day in 1877, where three patients – two men and one woman – escaped from the Whitmore Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics. The trio, undetected by the hospital’s attendants, walked into the woods near the hospital that afternoon but only the men returned. The book’s protagonist Jane, an archivist in a London museum that is about to be shut down, has spent countless hours investigating what happened, hoping to find out where the woman, known as N-, went. While it seems natural that an archivist would be interested in disappearing persons from the past, Jane’s fascination with the missing N- stems from a personal experience: when she was fifteen, Jane was babysitting a five year-old girl in the very same woods when the girl she was minding seemingly disappeared into thin air. The police were never able to find her and this has haunted Jane’s life ever since. Will Jane, now in her thirties, find a connection between the two lost girls through her research? Will she ever find out what happened to them in the woods and gain closure? Who are the mysterious narrators of the novel and what role do they play in Jane’s life?

The first thing I have to say about The World Before Us is how beautiful its writing is. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not usually one to tab my books, but my copy is now filled with sticky flags as I couldn’t help but mark down my favourite passages. In Hunter’s words, blood on a shirt is described as “an impossible red flower” (327); a rug is not just a rug, it has a “border of green leaves and butter-coloured flowers” (175)… the attention to detail and masterful wording makes The World Before Us a piece of literature worth reading based on its language alone.

That being said, The World Before Us doesn’t just rely on its wonderful writing. On top of being quietly poetic and evocative, the novel touches on everything that interests me as a reader: the Victorian era, memory, history, identity, and dreams. Here’s a particularly beautiful observation about memory and history:

“Memory being what it is, we sometimes remember backwards, or sideways, or inside out. …Applause spilling out from an audience might equal heartache; a leaflet for the Fancy Fair might put the taste of toffee in our mouths. History is never perfectly framed, although the photographs in the museum may suggest otherwise.” (198)

Insightful thoughts like these are scattered throughout the novel and together they set the book apart from other plot-driven novels that I’ve read. I will reiterate my earlier point in thinking that the book isn’t 100% perfect, but overall I would still rate it a 5-star read. (In fact, writing this review just made me want to re-read this book right now…)

Verdict: A strong book that is plot-driven but injects some wonderful writing and sentiments into the mix. I am a huge fan of this book and I’m glad I had a chance to read it!

Read if: You’re as fascinated with the Victorian era as I am, love beautifully-written prose, want to immerse yourself in a world that is like our own but is just strange enough to feel other-worldly.

Are you a fan of the Victorian era? Why do you think novels about missing people are so popular?

*All pages quoted in this review are from the advanced reader’s copy and may be different from the finished book.

[Makenzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have way too much I want to read, so I'm trying to get better at abandoning books I don't like instead of torturing myself to finish them. I quite liked the unique, omniscient, first person plural narration - it added an interesting touch, and I spent awhile quite riveted because I wanted to figure out just who the mysterious narrators were. However, past that, this book fell flat. It just seemed fragmented to me, and the emphasis on archives and museum artifacts bored me. Of course, this is especially unfortunate because I really wanted to like this book - the writer went to the same university that I am going to and teaches at another university in the city. Sigh.

[Laurie Notaro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous writing, pretty much flawless. The flow and rhythm are beautiful. But the problem is the story. Absorbing initially, it grows overly complicated, so much so that by the conclusion, barely any of the many plot lines are completed. Much is left hanging in the air, and the story lines that are concluded are not the ones the reader needs to be resolved. It has history, loss, pain, mystery, ghosts...just not an ending. I think this book needed at least fifty more pages to fully round out the story. It doesn't feel done.

[Katharine · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the cover of my copy of this book is a handwritten letter dated 21st October 1877, signed by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. He is writing to the Governor of the Whitley Hospital for Convalescent Lunatics about two of his patients who escaped from the asylum and walked to his house. Although surprised by these visitors – one of whom claimed to be the Assistant Librarian at the British Museum – Tennyson invites them in and offers them tea. Although advising the governor to take precautions to ensure that it does not happen again, Tennyson writes that he “is very glad if they in any way enjoy’d themselves here” and he “hopes that they did not suffer from their long walk.”

This true letter inspired Aislinn Hunter’s The World Before Us, a novel about the powerful effects of trauma and guilt, the importance of remembering and the slipperiness of history. Set in both present day London and a Victorian mental asylum in Yorkshire, the opening chapter follows three patients as they walk out of the hospital and to a nearby country house. A fictionalised version of the above letter is used in the narrative, although it is a shame that Lord Alfred Tennyson does not appear as a cameo in the novel. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

The World Before Us has multiple narrative strands, but at the heart of the novel is the story of Jane, an archivist at a museum, who has to come to terms with a traumatic event in her past. When she was fifteen, whilst walking in the grounds of a stately home in Yorkshire, the little girl she was minding disappeared – she ran off into the woods and was never seen again. This event has a profound effect on Jane’s adult life.

The closing of the museum triggers a personal crisis, and Jane returns to the village where the tragedy took place in order to investigate another disappearance. In the course of her research as a student, Jane discovers the story of two patients and a young woman who walk out of a local Victorian mental asylum. Although the patients are returned, the girl – known only as N – disappears from the pages of history. The mirroring between these two storylines – the modern day disappearance of a little girl and the historical disappearance of N – form the narrative centre of the novel.

The novel is also narrated by ghosts. These characters are not ghosts in the traditional sense of the word, but more like presences or echoes of the past. They have no names because they cannot remember them, and know each other by epithets such as the Poet, the Musician and the Idiot. They are drawn to Jane because of her preoccupation with the past and her work as an archivist at the museum. As she pieces together the story of the girl who disappears from a Victorian mental asylum, the lives of the ghosts also come into focus.

The World Before Us is a complex novel with many layers, following Jane in the present day as she struggles with her research, with flashbacks to Jane at fifteen when the disappearance occurs, interspersed with the Victorian storylines of the ghostly characters. It is sometimes difficult to keep these storylines straight as they overlap and refract, and the historical thread of the novel involves sibling rivalry, an illicit affair and a tragic death – as well as fascinating descriptions of mental asylums and treatments in the 19th century.

The World Before Us is beautifully written. Hunter is a talented wordsmith and takes a lot of care crafting graceful, flowing sentences and lyrical descriptions. Her prose is elegant and simple and the way that she writes about abstract concepts – such as memory or history – is remarkable:

“Memory being what it is, we sometime remember backwards, or sideways, or inside out. We will read the name of a song and instead of its melody some of us might experience a tightness around the ribs, a corseting. Or we might recall the notes but instead of seeing the musicians playing will picture the diamond pattern of a floor. Applause spilling out from an audience might equal heartache; a leaflet for the Fancy Fair might put the taste of toffee in our mouths. History is never perfectly framed, although the photographs in the museum may suggest otherwise.” (p. 198)

The World Before Us is a thoughtful, meandering book. At times it borders on being a little bit slow, but personally I loved that the writing focusses on small details such as the news story about the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for sixty nine days. This is a motif that recurs throughout the storyline and serves a dual purpose: it anchors the novel in the present day and is also a metaphor that provides hope for a positive resolution.

The World Before Us will be published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton on 26th March 2015.

About the Author:

Aislinn Hunter is a Canadian writer and academic. The World Before Us is her second novel. Her first novel, Stay, was adapted for film and released in 2013, starring the actress Taylor Schilling (from Orange is the New Black). She has also published two collections of poetry. She lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC for review.

History shifts and is ever present in this magical novel by Hunter. Jane is a curator, losing her position at the Chester Museum as it closes. The closing coincides with an event to celebrate an person from Jane's past William. Their paths have not crossed since Jane was a teenager and an horrifying event occurred which altered both of their lives. This event took place on the Farrington trail, and we move back in forth in time between the mid to late 1800s when Norvill Farrington relied on the Chester family, as well as other benefactors, to finance his exploration of the world, trips from which he brings back some of the artifacts that serve as cornerstones of the Chester collection...which becomes the Chester museum.

Confused yet? Did I mention there is also an 1800s story about an insane asylum and a day on which three people from the asylum left and visited Norvill Farrington? Oh, and that Jane is constantly surrounded by a number of ghosts who are unsure who and what they are?

If the description is convoluted, the execution is incredibly deft. Historical fiction is not my favorite genre, and at least half of this book is that, but I couldn't stop guessing what was going to happen next and my surprise when I was both right and wrong. The one problem with the book was the ending - I couldn't get too invested in Jane's search for "N." so the last bits were a bit anti-climactic, but overall an excellent, imaginative read - I think this one is going to find a lot of fans.