The Resurrectionist

by James Bradley

This book is set in London, 1826. Leaving behind his father's tragic failures, Gabriel Swift arrives to study with Edwin Poll, the greatest of the city's anatomists. It is his chance to find advancement by making a name for himself. But instead he finds himself drawn to his master's nemesis, Lucan, the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies. Dismissed by Mr Poll, Gabriel descends into the violence and corruption of London's underworld, a place where everything and everyone is for sale, and where - as Gabriel discovers - the taking of a life is easier than it might seem.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Horror, Historical, Gothic, Mystery, Thriller

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

James is the author of five novels: the critically acclaimed climate change narratives, Ghost Species (Hamish Hamilton 2020) and Clade (Hamish Hamilton 2015); The Resurrectionist (Picador 2006), which explores the murky world of underground anatomists in Victorian England and was featured as one of Richard and Judy's Summer Reads in 2008; The Deep Field (Sceptre 1999), which is set in the near future and tells the story of a love affair between a photographer and a blind palaeontologist; and Wrack (Vintage 1997) about the search for a semi-mythical Portuguese wreck. He has also written The Change Trilogy for young adults. a book of poetry, Paper Nautilus, and edited two anthologies, The Penguin Book of the Ocean and Blur, a collection of stories by young Australian writers. His first book of non-fiction, Deep Water: the World in the Ocean will be published in 2024.

Twice one of The Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Novelists, his books have won The Age Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Fellowship of Australian Writers Literature Award and the Kathleen Mitchell Award, and have been shortlisted for awards such as the Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the NSW Premier's Christina Stead Award for Fiction, the Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction and the Aurealis Award for Best Science Fiction Novel, and have been widely translated. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and collections, including Best Australian Stories, Best Australian Fantasy and Horror and The Penguin Century of Australian Stories, and has been shortlisted for the Aurealis Awards for Best Science Fiction Short Story and Best Horror Short Story.

As well as writing fiction and poetry, James writes and reviews for a wide range of Australian and international newspapers and magazines. In 2012 he won the Pascall Prize for Australia's Critic of the year.

Reviews

[Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up

1824, the darkest corners of Georgian London. Prostitution, abuse, neglect, and worse. This book deals with Resurrectionists who steal bodies and sell them to surgeons all in the name of medical advancement. It's incredibly dark and gruesome, and there are some images it places in your head that you do not want to be there.

I struggled with the prose at first, sort of minimalist gothic that took me a while to get used to, and it definitely helped having really short chapters and page breaks. The second part (the last 50 pages) set in Australia is really strange, a complete contrast to the first. Like I said, there is some content in here that many will find too much, and that probably reflects in the very low rating the book has. Definitely not for everyone.

[Verity · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is undoubtedley one of the worst books I have ever read. The plot jerks from one thought to another with no real explanation, the "gory" parts made me yawn and absolutley no part of this novel was haunting like the synopsis promised it would be.
Aside from the bad writing, my main problem with it is that just as the book promises to be getting bearable, (over half way through!!) the plot line inexplicabley changes and it is as if Bradley has begun a new novel. Which is just as boring as the one before. All this, and the ending was laughable.
Save your time and money!

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

A well written, but not very gripping tale of a 'physician' who ends up becoming a grave robber whom, as a result of this 'career' change, is mightily punished. One of those books where the title and the concept are a lot better than the book itself. Overall it's that old chestnut, storytelling... as in the lack of it! 4 out of 12.

[Rebecca · Rating 1 out of 5]

A really grim book. There are many characters but there is barely any description & no development so I found myself struggling to remember who is who. As a consequence the relationships are hard to buy & conversations always seem stilted, the female characters are particularly one dimensional. The violence is gratuitous yet dull & there wasn’t so much an ending as a fading out.

[Amanda · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly the worst book ever written. I was really looking forward to reading this book but the character development is non existent. The first couple of pages were really interesting and I loved reading about the work of the anatomists but it all goes down hill after that. The second part of the book is just ridiculous. I ws determined to finish it but I was sorry I did.

[SeaBae · Rating 2 out of 5]

James Bradley is an accomplished author, and his sense of atmosphere and mood are among the best I've read. His use of words is brilliant.

Unfortunately, he uses them in a muddied, Grand Guignol-esque story with a less than three dimensional central character. He also has an annoying habit of jumping forward in the narrative, then using flashback, more told than shown, to fill in the missing details.

The hero, Gabriel, is more acted upon than acts himself. Bradley makes up back story as it suits him for his character. At first, Gabriel is shown washing the corpses his employer uses for anatomy lessons with care, and he demonstrates a sense of remorse and caring toward both the dead lesson objects and the living people of his acquaintance. However, later, when the story requires Gabriel to turn into a serial killer of sorts, the author reveals that Gabriel has psychopathic tendencies - he enjoyed watching a servant kill a cat when he was a child. But this is at odds with Gabriel's earlier depiction - and since the story is told in Gabriel's first person it's hard to reconcile the two.

I'm sure the book is meant to be an elegant, literary rumination on life, death, and the thin thread that connects us to each other - but by the time Gabriel gets to Australia I had lost all interest in what that rumination might be.

[Cate Earnshaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unsettlingly beautiful descriptions of the underbelly of Georgian London. Bradley is a wordsmith; this book is dank, fetid and repulsive, strangely beguiling but sadly equally unsatisfying.

Usually the jacket synopsis is covered in the first few chapters, but not with this novel. Here you only reach the 3rd line of the synopsis 1/2 way through the book! So it's not exactly a pacy read. Written in the 1st person, it is sometimes difficult to know who Gabriel is talking to or looking at, but it does become clear eventually. The plot is thin, this is a meander through darkness, and a descent into failure and misery.

*spoiler* (though I won't say What happens, I must comment on Where it happens).

Personally I would have been more content if the novel had ceased at the 'obvious end point' or shortly after. Instead we are given an extended epilogue, taking place not in London but Australia. Whilst this section speaks of redemption and poses questions as to the nature of man, it does not add anything further to the character development nor plot. Indeed I must question whether the whole purpose was to relocate the action to the country who gave the Author a substantial financial grant.

[Emma · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I've identified the main problem with this book: every character is unlikeable, or boring, so that I honestly couldn't care less about what happens to any of them.

Still, I pressed on determined to finish (admittedly this probably fueled my dislike). Not only are the characters horrible, but there's so many of them with generic Victorian names that I regularly mistook them for one another. Luckily this barely seemed to affect the plot, and may have made some of them more well-rounded, as several people only turned up once, never to be seen again.

Gabriel's downfall is vivid and well written, but quite predictable. Some of his anecdotes surrounding his past were unnecessary and jarring; nstead of bringing the character to life they over-complicate him to the point of confusion (Wait, suddenly we find he likes seeing kittens murdered?!).

As I finally felt the story gaining some rhythm and purpose to it (a shocking 3/4 through), Bradley flings us into another continent and situation. Eventually it becomes clear that the book hasn't been bound incorrectly, but only after dragging through the tedium of yet more lacklustre names and conversations, by which point I think I was actually fuming that the writer would abuse it's readers so much.

I understand that the book is meant to be all noir and about his journey and his life getting twisted up with death. For me though, it moved crushingly slowly with no real purpose, despite the promising quality of the writing. I wasn't even particularly disturbed by Gabriel or the events unfolding, although I'm sure I was intended to be; everything was just tainted by my overwhelming disinterest.

[Tania · Rating 1 out of 5]

A tale about body snatching in Georgian London, What's not to like? Well there's the lack of cohesion, the lack of plot and the unlikable characters. A plot nearly emerged about 2/3 of the way through only to disappear again.

[Maddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

That was a really frustrating read! No real character development, plot sketchy and not really thought through. Read it if you like but I wouldn't recommend it.

[Deborah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm within 40 pages of finishing this book and I have stayed up 2 nights (as I'm wont to do when I get my hands on a book I adore!) reading it after hubby goes to bed.

Finished the book and nothing but kudos to the writer for a great read!

This is a horrific, terrific, psychological and insane story that just captures and keeps coming at you until you're convinced Poe has you sitting by a fireplace in some dank Pennsylvanian farmhouse.

It's different, unusual, beautifully written. Mr. Bradley can turn a phrase, absolutely. His writing is such that it will stop you in your tracks and make you go back to read a sentence again just to experience the beauty or the thrill or the horror of it. Every single sentence is magical and meaningful...

I can do nothing but highly recommend this book to everyone. But, I have to mention this one reservation....it's not for the squeamish. The Resurrectionists were, afterall, men who robbed graves for science's sake.

[Sophie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Agghh - another over-hyped disappointment of a book. Rambled on; took half the book to get any sort of a story going and then lost it again. When will publishers and editors start becoming a little more selective?

The whole style seemed fragmented and inconsistent. Not easy to empathise with the character either or any of them for that matter. Wish I hadn't stuck it out to the end as it wasn't worth my time. How did it get picked as a 'Richard & Judy' pick?

I'd steer well clear of this one as it does the genre of the gothic novel a great disservice.

[Helen Maltby · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did NOT enjoy this. It seemed to leap from one thought to another and made little sense at the time. Call me old-fashioned but I like to know who a character is talking to. I'd rather the author didn't assume that because the character knows who he is talking to, then so does the reader!

On the plus side it isn't so long as it appears as it is full of very short chapters with lots of white space!

[Nath · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. Such an enthralling adventure into the grimiest depths of the grave robbing trade, and an excellent view of the ghastly London underworld. Great characters, excellent story and about as ghoulish a novel as I've experienced. Haven't been as chilled by a book since The Silence of the Lambs. Intensely readable but with splashes of literary magic, I feel the need to use such tired cliches as 'unputdownable' and 'page-turner', but without irony or rancour. Read it.

[Andrea · Rating 1 out of 5]

Awful, awful, awful book. The language of the main character is horribly false and appears to be based upon James Bradley's imaginings of the way people spoke in this era, rather than any actual knowledge. A really poorly developed story.

[Martha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really regret having forced myself to finish this tedious and depressing novel. I couldn't feel anything for any of the characters. They were so underdeveloped and so much of the plot was similarly shallow. A thoroughly unenjoyable read.

[Bridget · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but what a let down. Events and conversations don’t make sense and the characters are very unlikeable and not engaging at all. Huge disappointment.

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading this book reminded me of a remark by Tom Servo in MST3K: "It's like they had two helpings of tension that they're trying to stretch out for seven people."

London, 1826, and Gabriel Swift works as apprentice to renowned anatomist Edwin Poll. These are the days of the Resurrection Men, when the expanding medical schools face a shortage of bodies for dissection, giving rise to the expansion of the bodysnatching trade. The godfather of London's resurrectionists is the dark figure Lucan, who holds the surgeons and anatomists of London in his palm. When Mr. Poll crosses Lucan, it leads to a power struggle between the two, and within the ranks of the resurrectionists. And when Gabriel falls foul of Poll's sinister henchman, it leads to his dismissal from Poll's service, and to him throwing in his lot with Lucan.

This book is praised on the cover as a "Gothic chiller"; however, I can't say I found it particularly Gothic, or particularly chilling or thrilling. It's certainly atmospheric: Bradley has a deft hand with descriptive prose, and there are plenty of suitably macabre and stomach-turning descriptions of dead bodies and surgical experiments, and bursts of graphic violence. Suffice it to say, this is not a book for the faint-hearted. It's unflinching, it's dark, it's disturbing, and there times where the atmosphere is suitably nightmarish, as if the reader has been drawn into one of Gabriel's opium stupors.

Unfortunately, there's simply too much atmosphere, to the extent that the first half of the book feels like an overlong setting-up. Nothing really happens for over a hundred and fifty pages, and frankly, it quickly became tedious. This is not a ripping yarn; the plot is pretty simple, thin even. Instead, this book is more concerned with ruminating, of asking questions, and following one man's descent into iniquity, with the bodysnatching as a backdrop. Which is fine, but the way the book is told doesn't do it any favours. Pacing is a serious issue: the whole thing is told in the same contemplative, philosophising tone throughout, and it meanders along at the same unhurried pace as Gabriel navel-gazes his way through the underworld of Georgian London. A plot starts to appear when Gabriel joins the resurrectionists, around page 170-odd, but that lasts less than a hundred pages, before the reader is suddenly jerked into what feels like a 70-page epilogue.

The book's main flaw, however, is that Bradley has apparently focused on atmosphere and pseudo-philosophy at the expense of characterisation. The central character, Gabriel, never really rises above the role of narrator to become a fully realised character. Throughout the book, he remains a cipher, an observer rather than active player. The rest of the cast, too, are so thinly drawn that they're one-dimensional at best. This is a book which wants us to tease out the motivations of its characters, but there is so little to them that they remain frustratingly elusive. Gabriel is forever observing that so much lies unspoken between the characters, but this feels more like an illusion to make the reader believe that there is more to these characters beneath the surface than there really is. And Gabriel suffers the most for this. We are given so little information about him that his motivation, his descent from respectable anatomist's apprentice to resurrectionist and cold-blooded killer, remains fairly obscure. It's not even a case of being sympathetic - he's not, but then, these are bodysnatchers and murderers, how sympathetic do you expect them to be? - but that there is nothing there for the reader to engage with. And with no connection to the main character, there's no incentive for the reader to hold him up as a mirror into their darkest selves, or whatever it is that books of this type want you to do.

In short, this book is full of potential - exploring the darkest sides of human nature against such a gruesomely fascinating backdrop is a brilliant idea - but ultimately, it fails to live up to that potential.

[Cristina Mureșan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disturbing, thought provoking, quite challenging to read.

[Annerlee · Rating 4 out of 5]

"In their sacks they ride as in their mother's womb: knee to chest, head pressed down, as if to die is merely to return to the flesh from which we were born, and this is the second conception [-] A knife then, to cut the rope which binds the sack, and, one lifting, the other pulling, we deliver it of its contents, slipping them forth onto the table's surface, naked and cold, as a calf or child stillborn slides from its mother."
Wow- what a tender, sad, beautiful start to a book... I've never experienced such a moving description of a corpse - never looked or considered the dead so closely before. If I didn't read any more of this book - the first, haunting three pages would be enough...

[F.R. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I freely admit that I threw this book down in boredom after only eighty pages. Although there seem to be interesting events taking place in the tale, the prose has a dreamy and unhurried quality, which serves only to distance the reader from the plot and left me feeling totally uninvolved.

If Robert Louis Stevenson had written about body snatchers like this, they’d never have captured the public imagination.

[Sean Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think if this book had ended before the section in Australia, I would have found it a pleasantly diverting tale. But the final coda makes it so much more. It then becomes an almost metaphorical tale of the founding of Australia, and the death it was built upon. We all look for new beginnings, but are haunted by the past and never atone for it.

[Michael Shilling · Rating 2 out of 5]

The last 50 pages - an extended epilogue - are good, but the rest is predictable, thin, and over-stylized. Period pieces need to play with their conventions a bit - otherwise why bother - but Bradley wants to follow all the rules, so it's a bit prissy.

[Denise · Rating 1 out of 5]

Frustratingly slow read. I had high hopes for this as the subject matter appealed to me (yeah, I know, sorry...) but I found the style of the prose clumsy, I didn't really get the main character, and I just lost interest enough to not carry on reading.
Disappointing.

[Mel Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up purely because I'm interested in medical history and the historical phenomenon of 'resurrection men', having read several non-fiction books set in London in this period and touching on this topic. What fascinates me is the uncanniness of the trade in the recently dead, situated as it is on the border between the respectability of medicine and the profanity of grave-robbing.

I was also drawn to the proto-Dickensian quality of the early 19th-century London underworld, which feels so familiar as to be a cliché – it's the world Michel Faber pastiches in The Crimson Petal and the White and Sarah Waters pastiches in Fingersmith. There are the dissipated gentlemen, the vicious servants, the creepy doctors, the golden-hearted actresses and ladies of the night, and reigning over it all, like some shadowy Moriarty figure, the rather ambiguously coded Lucan (surely not coincidentally sharing a name with the notorious real-life Lord Lucan), who rules the body-snatching trade and keeps anatomists and underlings at his mercy.

The very short chapters lend a nightmarish sense to the novel. Things are only seen in glimpses, like the illumination from a naked, subterranean light-bulb swinging from a chain, or a match flaring in the dark, then dropped from seared fingers. Gabriel, the protagonist, never seems fully cognisant or in control of the story, through which he's half-willingly propelled; unlike some readers here, who saw this as evidence of bad writing, I saw it as a deliberate choice to put the reader in Gabriel's increasingly helpless position.

His fall into the most diabolical depths is precipitated by what seems at the time a moral act: his refusal to accept for dissection by his surgeon master a child's corpse that he knows will be recognised, and whose recognition will cause pain. This sends him on a path that fetches him up, rudely, in colonial New South Wales. This hairpin turn in the narrative was disorienting, and it took me a long time to figure out what was going on.

It's super creepy and not especially subtle, but the image of rebirth – the notion of different lives into which one can slip, or life's cracks into which one can fall – carries through from the opening paragraph, which likens the dug-up corpses in sacks to foetuses in wombs, ready to emerge into their macabre second existence. But when applied to colonial Australia, this motif takes on new resonance, as the settlers are clearly willing to accept a large amount of social reinvention… to a point.

My own ancestor changed his name from Frederick to Alfred when he arrived in Melbourne in 1848, aged 20, having been transported for seven years for stealing a pair of boots. He was the beneficiary of a short-lived and controversial 'exile' scheme in which basically, convicts were set free when they got to Australia, and the British government even set them up with lodgings, food and jobs, on the understanding that they didn't return. Obviously the non-convict settlers got a bit NIMBY about the idea of rubbing shoulders with scot-free convicts, and the scheme was abandoned in 1849.

This isn't a perfect novel. It never feels quite moored in its historical setting, which may annoy fans of ultra-accurate historical fiction, and its ending feels a little murky, as if its themes are still not quite in focus. I've since read that James Bradley struggled for a long time to write this book, which has made me more sympathetic to and forgiving of its less clearly realised elements. I enjoyed reading it a lot, and I recommended it on The Rereaders, the podcast I co-host.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think I finally clicked with my issue with this book toward the end. The protagonist is that listless, depressed, desensitised to life and everything in it, it makes reading the whole book one long, numb, careless task. I wasn't very aware of who was who through the majority of the book as very few characters had individual personality traits beyond either 'thoughtful' or 'cruel'.

Gabriel doesn't give a shit really, he never asked to be an apprentice in the first place (made clear early on) and so even in moments that should be horrifying, scary, thrilling, the manner in which it is told is anything but and so it loses a lot. That said, it's probably an excellent study on depression.

Also it's never clear on what charge he's actually tried later on. That didn't help.

Why was this a Richard and Judy summer book club book 😂 I couldn't think of a book less summery! And though 'less summery' is instantly appealing to me, this one was just... dead.

2 stars for the misty, gothic setting that at least conjured up some spooky atmos mentally.

[Cititoare Calatoare · Rating 5 out of 5]

In Londra anului 1826, Gabriel Swift avand un talent deosebit la desen, se afla in ucenicie la cel mai mare anatomist londonez, Edwin Poll.
Decaderea ucenicului, ne arata influenta puternica a anturajului, a dependentei de narcotice si faptul ca trecutul este parte din noi, oricat de mult am incerca sa renuntam la el.
Prin intermediul descrierilor amanuntite, lumea lui Gabriel prinde contur si astfel putem vedea o depravarea caracteristica lumii interlope. O atmosfera sumbra ce se impleteste cu reflectari profunde asupra vietii.

[Tabata Ioana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Cred ca autorul reuseste destul de bine transpuna cititorul in atosfera sinistra creeata in carte prin stilul sau de a scrie, si asta e singurul lucru care mi-a placut.
Finalul insa l-am considerat cam insuficient.
Cu toate ca nu sunt nicidecum o persoana sadica sau mai stiu eu ce ciudatenie, mi-a facut placere sa citesc despre niste lucruri mai putin cunoscute despre care se vorberte doar in soapta.

[Tracey · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought this was going to be a dark , gritty read but it was a rather dull read to be honest.
There was no suspense in the world of stealing bodies in a Georgian London .
I needed this to be more brooding , gory but it fell flat.

[Ana on the Shelves · Rating 1 out of 5]

A good idea with a subpar execution.