Frannie Langton narrates her life story - from her childhood as a house slave in Jamaica, through to arrest for the murder of her master and her beloved mistress in London. Frannie can't remember what happened on the night of the murder, and she is also hiding from herself the activities she was engaged in with her master Langton on the ironically named Paradise Plantation in Jamaica. The story was a gripping one, and I had to keep reading to find out whether my imaginings about what Frannie had done were correct.
As a compelling read, it is hard to fault this book, but I felt that the author raised issues that weren't quite resolved: for example, the debate about how white men wanted to see slaves only as victims or beasts - what was the reader's position in sharing Frannie's story? I also couldn't quite decide if the story was historically accurate: lots didn't ring quite true (although I'm willing to be told that it was); but it wasn't obviously an alternative take on history in the way that 'the Underground Railroad' is.

The premise of this book was great, but the actual execution wasn't the best for me.
The beginning and the last 20% were really good, but the middle dragged a lot. There were lots of scenes which didn't add much to the plot, and sometimes the alternation between past and present was too sudden and confusing. It might also be that I really didn't like the romance. I couldn't see why Frannie was so devoted to the person she loved. Their scenes together just annoyed me.
That being said, the writing was good (even if too descriptive for my tastes) and Frannie's characterization was interesting. She was a complex character and, while I mostly felt sympathetic towards her, she also had a darker side and many mysterious traits. Her narration of certain scenes was very ambiguous, so that it was difficult to understand how reliable she truly was. This was definitely an interesting aspect, even though it also kept me from really loving and feeling for her.
Another thing I liked was how the mystery aspect was handled. The court scenes were gripping, and my idea about the murders changed several times during the story. The solution wasn't entirely clear until the end and I liked it. However, this was a small aspect of the story compared to others, and it was a little disappointing for me.
Not a bad book but not exactly to my tastes. However, I think you should give it a try if you are interested in it.

This book is about the life of Frannie Langton. We meet her as she awaits the outcome of her trial in London for the murder of her "Madame" and then the action goes back in time to Frannie's time as a young girl, a mulatto slave girl on a Jamaican plantation who is brought at the age of seven to work in the big house along with Phibba the cook to see to the mistress's every whim. The mistress is unhappily married to Mr Langton and can be a cruel mistress although she does teach Frannie to read and write. The master is certainly cruel and one day gets Frannie to admit where Phibba keeps her "healing" herbs which leads to Phibba's demise. Frannie blames herself for this and is also haunted by the help she gave Mr Langton with his experiments into genetics in his coach house. So, although she maintains she is not guilty of the crimes she is standing trial for she feels she is guilty of murder. Langton is eventually ousted from his plantation and takes Frannie to London and gives her to George Benham a former colleague and a published and noted expert on genetics who he hopes will reappraise his opinion on Landton's research and recommend him for publishing. It is here that Frannie meets "madame", Mr Benham's wife and starts on her path to the gallows

I quite enjoyed this book. It had a lot of potential and things to like but I felt the author wanted to cram in everything she had researched, everything she knew about the 1820's and it felt a bit like "everything but the kitchen sink" had been thrown at it. Halfway through I wasn't rushing back to keep reading and I also felt it was a bit of a pastiche of other novels I'd read. The early part of the book set on a Jamaican plantation was very reminiscent of Andrea Levy's The Long Song and then the later part set in England was reminiscent of lots of Victorian gothic novels with opium addiction and some Sarah Waters (Fingersmith) thrown in too. There was also Frankenstein type horror revealed over the course of the novel about the experiments that the master carried out in the coach house on his Jamaican plantation. It was all abit too much and I feel if one or more story lines had been dropped in favour of really exploring one or two then it would have been a finer novel.

Hmmm...I have to say I didn’t like this book at all. It started promising but just was too slow for me and I just got a bit bored. I didn’t empathise or like any of the characters either. Sorry..

My thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy.

This is a finely detailed, richly coloured, riveting read. The story is quite shocking as Frannie was a house slave, a mulatto, very bright and despite everything has incredible strength of character, shocking because of what she sees and experiences. Moving from Jamaica to London, grannies life becomes even more complicated. Gothic, compelling, twisting and unsettling, this is a great read.

A dark and compelling read set in Jamaica and the UK telling the story of Frannie Langton. I really enjoyed this book and would definitely read more by this author. I couldn't put it down.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton opens in 1826 with Frannie awaiting trial, accused of the brutal murder of George and Marguerite Benham. Dubbed the “Mulatta Murderess” by the press, I liked that the reader immediately see’s Frannie’s current predicament, without understanding how she got there, nor having any indication of whether she is guilty or a useful scapegoat. Asked to write her confession, Frannie then takes the reader back to her time as a child on a Jamaican plantation where she was a slave to John Langton, describing the work she did there for Langton and the unusual circumstances which caused her to be taught to read, before describing how she came to London and began working for the Benhams, and what happened thereafter to bring her to the point where she is awaiting trial.

I felt a great deal of sympathy for Frannie, who doesn’t seem to fit in either in Jamaica or in London. As a slave on a plantation, her paler skin marks her out as different from those around her, and being chosen to work in the house rather than on the plantation itself also sets her apart from her from the other slaves, with such house slaves being detested by others. Being taught to read also marks her out as different, although she develops a thick skin early on in her life, and finds in novels a chance to escape, however briefly, and this education gives her a sense of pride. In London, she is also different to those around her, this time her skin being darker than what was considered to be the ideal complexion, although here her reading and articulate speech at least help her to be a little more accepted by society and those that serve them, although most see her as little more than a novelty.

Throughout the novel, Collins highlights the beliefs of the times, which range from bad to abominable. While there were those against slavery and who sought to abolish the practice all together, their protests in England don’t seem to do much good on the plantations where slavery is still very much the status quo. Additionally, Frannie’s arrival in London allows the reader to see the assumptions made about those who are different, particularly evidenced by the Benham’s Housekeeper, Linux, who immediately assumes that Frannie will be nothing but trouble, and who is most likely a thief, despite having only just met her and having no evidence upon to which to base such a judgement. Most horrific is the work that Langton was involved in upon his plantation which he calls science, and which Frannie was roped in to assist with. Much of the detail around this isn’t made apparent until later in the novel, but it seems that Langton sees his slaves as a different species to himself entirely, and seeks to prove this through experimentation.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is, unsurprisingly, told through Frannie’s confessions which she writes down as evidence for the trail against her, interspersed with newspaper clippings and excerpts from the trial as the reader sees different witnesses take the stand, and catalogues her time in Jamaica and London up until her trial. Towards the end of the novel, Collins changes tack slightly, as Frannie herself is brought in as witness and to defend herself in court. I love court cases, particularly in novels such as this, and I enjoyed the way that Collins kept me guessing as to Frannie’s guilt or innocence until the very end of the novel.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a brilliantly written debut that I would recommend to fans of novels such as Alias Grace.

This is a fantastic read, combining Andrea Levy's The Long Song with Hannah Kent's Burial Rites. Frannie is female, black, lesbian, a drug addict, a prostitute, and an accused criminal - but she is also a reader, a writer and she longs for justice. Riveting.

I really enjoyed this book. Could not put it down! It was deffo a page turner. It reminded me of Sarah Walters.

Here’s a debut out in April with a big buzz about it which appeared in many highlights of 2019 listings (including my very own Looking Back Looking Forward … blog post) so I was delighted to get the chance to read an advance review copy.

This is Frannie Langton’s account of how she got away from being a slave at a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the first quarter of the nineteenth century and ended up in London on trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of her employers.

It is very much a novel of two parts. Although we know from the outset of Frannie’s predicament, the first half is set in Jamaica where as a child she was taken up from the plantation shacks to be a house girl, and then, after being taught to read and write by her bored mistress becomes a scribe and assistant for her master, Langton. He is involved in disturbing experimentation to discover the difference between the anatomies of whites and blacks.

Damaged by what she has experienced she turns up in London joining the household of one of Langton’s academic rivals where she is drawn by the attention paid to her by his French wife.

Through a first- person confessional interspersed with extracts from the court case we begin to piece together what has happened, but very slowly, as Sara Collins certainly keeps us dangling. This might actually frustrate some readers who’ll think they missed out on something important as part of the Jamaican narrative seems underwritten and only becomes significant much later on. All is eventually explained. Characterisation is rich and gutsy with some strongly developed minor roles. Pace is generally good although for me it dipped in the early London sequence when the relationship between Frannie and Marguerite takes a prominent role.

Readers loving Sarah Waters’ novels such as “Fingersmith”, “Affinity” and “Tipping The Velvet” should certainly be made aware of this novel and with Waters moving towards more modern history in her novels in recent years there seems to be a gap which authors are keen to fill. Two debuts from last year spring to mind Imogen Hermes Gower’s splendid “The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock” and Laura Carlin’s deliciously Gothic “The Wicked Cometh” which also has a female-female relationship as its focus. I don’t think Sara Collins’ work is quite as good as either of these top-notch novels but it is a close-run thing with the Jamaican slave dimension adding another level of complexity and richness. All in all, this is a superior historical crime novel that does live up to pre-publication expectations and should end up selling well.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton blew me away. It was dark, absorbing and unique.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton begins with an author’s note which details the interesting background behind her decision to write the novel.

Sara Collins reread Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice and had an important realisation.

“At some point, there came the realisation that those books I loved didn’t quite loved me back.”

“Why couldn’t a Jamaican former slave be the star of her own gothic romance? Why couldn’t she be complicated, ambiguous, complex: why had no one like that ever had a love story like those?... I found myself wanting to chronicle the twisted affections between a mulatta maid and her white mistress. A story that is among other things a tribute to Jane Eyre, but with a protagonist who would have lived outside the margins set by history. Or, rather like Jane Eyre – if Jane had been given as a gift to the ‘finest mind in all of England’, and then accused of cuckolding and murdering him.”

The book begins in 1826 with Frannie in the Old Bailey on trial for the murder of her master and mistress. If she is found guilty then she will be put to death. The trouble is Frannie can’t remember what happened that night. The only thing she is sure of is that she loved Madame and she can’t imagine why she would have killed her even though she was found asleep next to the dead body with blood on her hands.

In the papers she is known as the ‘Mulatta Murderess.’

“I don’t make a habit of reading what the broadsheets say about me, for newspapers are like a mirror I saw once in a fair near the Strand that stretched my reflection like a rack, gave me two heads so I almost didn’t know myself. If you’ve ever had the misfortune to be written about, you know what I mean.”

During the course of the trial Frannie is painted as a slave, whore and a temptress and while all of those things may be true Frannie wants to tell her own story rather than let it be told for her as it has all her life.

“This is a story of love, not just murder, though I know that’s not the kind of story you’re expecting. In truth, no one expects any kind of story from a woman like me.”

Frannie spent her childhood in a place called Paradise as a ‘House-nigger’ to Langton and his wife Miss-Bella. She was brought to London by Langton when he returned and was immediately given to another man to be a maid in his house without her knowledge.

“It wasn’t my choice to be brought here but very little in my life ever was.”

That is a theme running through the novel, Frannie’s lack of control over her own life.

“I’m trying to write this story as if it’s mine. Yet I look back over what I’ve set down so far and see how much of my own paper and ink I’ve spent on Miss-Bella. The trouble is nothing ever happened to me except through her. That is just how it was.”

Whilst awaiting her trial Frannie is visited by some anti-slavers but she finds them just as bad as those who support slavery.

“All those good-doers, sniffing at the carcass of slavery, craving always to hear the worst thing. The worst thing isn’t that it strips the world to scraps and forces you to fight for them; the worst thing is that one of those scraps is yourself.”

One of the things I noticed whilst reading The Confessions of Frannie Langton was the way even characters I viewed as nice and liked were capable of casual racism. For example, on her first meeting with Frannie, Pru says some things that would be unacceptable now.

‘I’ve never seen a blue-skin this close before.’

‘A blue-skin?’

‘A darky. Like you.’

I could have told her I’d never seen a slaving white girl, but unlike her I could keep my thoughts to myself.”

Frannie struck me as a very angry character, rightfully so, but still very angry. I thought this was a stroke of genius from the author as it kept the reader unable to see whether she could be capable of murder or not.

“There’s no shortage of people who believe I am Savage enough to have done it, but some people look at black and see only a savage, the same people will look at arsenic and see only poison.”

Frannie has been many people throughout her life but what struck me was that she had never had a chance to be herself.

“I’m a puzzle. They expected a sly African. Or a bent-double maid. A mulatta whore. The Black Murderess. Which one will save me?”

The Confessions of Frannie Langton was a treat to read.

Harrowing and haunting this debut novel can stand comparison to Sarah Waters.

Such a fresh and distinctive voice. A credible and involving murder mystery that satisfyingly leaves quite a lot in the air.

I loved Frannie, her passion for books, her ability to survive, her take on what happens to her and men in 19th century London.

Beautifully written and observed.

Sara Collins grew up reading Jane Eyre and wondering why there could not be a black main character in these types of books, someone like her. So she wrote one herself. This is a very different slave narrative than any I have ever read and a debut novel. I will say that the middle part dragged a little, comparisons with Sarah Waters will be made (and if I were Collins I would say: thanks for that compliment, folks) and there were some descriptions that made me nearly physically sick. But then so was a slave’s life, so I can handle that moment of discomfort. Definitely worth a read.

I read the blurb and thought this book was going to be like Alias Grace which I loved watching.

It was okay but it didn't fully grab me. It was a but slow and just wasn't as entertaining as I had hoped.

Sorry but this just didn't grab me. It started off well, but then lost its way - though I ploughed on to the end as I hoped it might pick up again.

As seems to be a common trait at the moment, none of the main characters was really likeable, so I didn't really care what happened to them on the whole. That said, some of the things that apparently happened to Frannie were very unsavoury - although she seemed to view things at a distance, through a fog, and without any sign of deep emotion (or was it just me?!)

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC in return for my honest review.

Loved the sound of this so much and while I did enjoy it, I think it could have been so much better and with adjustments still could be. It felt slow and stilted, but then would jump a lot making it hard to focus. The end sort of just petered out. With some work I think this could be really good.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

I a, a huge fan of historical fiction and was very excited to read this. Unfortunately this book just wasn’t for me. The detail in the book was amazing, the streets and plantation in Jamaica literally came alive as the author described them. However unfortunately for me I just could not connect with the characters, there was so much description that it overshadowed both them and the plot. The pace of the book was so slow I frequently lost interest and skim read pages. There is not doubting the horror of the events and treatment Frannie lives through but sadly I just didn’t connect enough with her to be fully engaged in the book as a work of fiction.
I’m sorry to say this was not the book for me and despite the clearly excellent research behind it, I didn’t enjoy the book.
I was given a ARC by NetGalley. All opinions are my own.

From the very first page I was enthralled by this book. The similes and metaphors used were so innovative and imaginative it created wonderful images in your mind. The opening line of Chapter One,
"My trial starts the way my life did: a squall of elbows and shoving and spit."
conveys both the violence of birth and the crowded horror of the courtroom.
At the outset you know that Frannie is on trial for murder but the events which brought her to this place are gradually revealed through her confessions. She creates in the reader's mind the life of a slave girl how she is forced to do her owner's bidding regardless of how terrible his requests. The description of her arrival in London and her first sights of its crowded streets is also very evocative.
"I hadn't expected London to be crumbling like a stale loaf. Or the streets to be crowded with people in their hundreds! Faces pale enough to vanish into fog, then float up like curds in milk."
The story of Frannie's life, played out on the whim of her owners, is engaging and also unusual. Gradually the layers of deception are peeled back until her true history is revealed. Frannie is a character whose story will live on in the memory as is the horror of the the experiments conducted by Langton in the name of science .
I would thoroughly recommend this book and will recommend it to readers in my various book groups.

Frannie Langton, a former slave on a Jamaican plantation turned lady's maid to an eccentric, beautiful French lady in London stands accused of the murder of her employer and his wife. However, Frannie has no memory of what happened... As she awaits judgment, she turns to writing down a history of her life.

The Confessions of Frannie Langton traces the life of a very complex and intelligent young mulatto woman born on a sugar plantation in Jamaica who catches the eye of her owner, an aspiring scientist whose research focus is in biologically proving the racial inferiority of black men and women. I thought this was a really interesting subplot as Frannie is brought in as a sort of semi-apprentice, semi-subject, and particularly in the light of Frannie's continuing contemplation of her own complicity in the suffering of her fellow man. It also cleverly ties in with the latter events of her life, as Frannie stands accused of murder and is subject to the racist biases of eighteenth century Britain. Indeed, the sections set in Jamaica remained one of my favourites, offering a really compelling perspective of slavery as well as developing Frannie as a independent and rounded character.

I am a big fan of historical fiction so it was no surprise that I really enjoyed this one, and I especially liked that I came out of this feeling like I had learnt some history, specifically surrounding how racism had infiltrated science in the eighteenth century. It also felt authentic in the sense that Frannie often speaks around the role she played in experimentations and what occurred within, even though her vagueness did frustrate me on occasions as I was hoping to learn more about the genesis of her trauma! At the same time, I think The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a very strong debut and puts itself apart from other historical fiction because it was able to draw in the story of her life - from sugar fields to barns-turned-laboratories to fancy London homes to brothels to prison - into coherent commentary on racism as well as really flowing thematically.

This review has primarily focused on Frannie's earlier life, partly because I feel it best for future readers to go in as blind as possible but also because I did find a lot of Frannie's story when she moves to London slow-moving and perhaps a bit stilted. While I flew through the start, it did take me awhile to finish as I kept putting it down being so easily distracted in the post-Christmas slump. It's a shame but I would argue that the resulting whodunnit aspect of the novel is the least impressive and compelling. Nevertheless, it would be remiss for me not to mention that London really makes Frannie, as she navigates choppy waters as the 'darky' maid in a very white household, falls in love and into an illicit relationship and experiments with laudanaum, all whilst constantly flirting with danger as a young woman who does not fit in the societal constraints of acceptability.

I thoroughly recommend giving this one a try and I look forward to reading what next Sara Collins has to offer.

Many thanks to Netgalley and Penguin Books for providing me with a copy for review.

"But when all that's left to us are bad choices, we tell ourselves we have none. Death can be a choice too, the dark link between dreaming and madness."

The first part of this book was really good but I felt the story lost its way in the middle. The scientific angle to racism was interesting. This was a refreshing look at slavery in that it touches on some people’s fascination with the awful details of slavery:
“Only two types of white people in this world, chile, the ones doing shit to you and the ones wanting you to tell them ’bout the shit them other ones did.”
Many thanks to a Penguin and Netgalley for an arc of this book.