Literary novel about an obsessive doll-maker (and collector) who travels across the South coast to find the woman he's been writing to, interleaved with dark fables from an emigre doll-maker and author.

The Dollmaker is a book composed of many stories. The main narrative follows Andrew, a man fascinated by dolls. His fascination started when he was eight years old and bullied because of his height. Something about their smallness and imperfections allowed him to accept how he was perceived by other people. However, what just started as a hobbie became his life when people started to buy his own creations: his monstrous yet fascinating troll dolls. Composed of parts taken from other broken dolls, they are Andrew’s tiny Frankenstein monsters.

While reading a specialized magazine, he stumbles upon an ad written by Bramber Winters, a woman looking for information on Ewa Chaplin, a famous dollmaker. Andrew doesn’t know a lot about Chaplin but he’s immediately captivated by the ad. They soon start exchanging letters and Andrew quickly realizes than he is in love with Bramber. Once he realizes that, he knows he has to meet her. However, Andrew knows two things about Bramber: she loves dolls and she has been living in West Edge House, a former mental hospital for twenty years.

The Dollmaker follows Andrew’s journey as he crosses the country to meet the woman he’s obsessed with. During his travel, he decides to give Ewa Chaplin’s collection of short stories a try since they are so important to Bramber. However, as soon as he starts reading the strange and eerie stories, he realizes the odd similarities between them and his own life.

As I mentioned, this book has a very interesting structure, some sections are narrated by Andrew, other are fragments from Bramber’s letters or stories written by Ewa Chaplin. I loved the short stories which isn’t surprising since I love Nina Allan’s short fiction. Her prose is superb and very atmospheric. The Chaplin stories all had the same eerie quality, beautiful writing and fascinating themes. Dwarves, dolls and monsters are at the center of those five stories and they were without a doubt what I loved the most in The Dollmaker.

I was also fascinated by Bramber’s letters, I loved learning about her and slowly discovering why she wanted to stay at West Edge House. Her story is very interesting and her letters were written in a sort of stream of consciousness style that allowed me to really understand her. I wish Allan’s had included some of Andrew’s letters. It would have been a great way to see how he portrayed himself to Bramber. Since we only get Bramber’s perspective, I could only guess from her answers.

The rest of the book was narrated from Andrew’s perspective, he’s not a particularly nice but the world never gave him any reason to be. His unhealthy fascination for broken dolls and for Bramber was pretty creepy but, in a bizarre way, I could understand why he acted the way he did.

Bramber and Andrew are both very odd characters, they seem to be living outside of time. Except for a few mentions of technology, this story could be set decades ago: both characters use letters to communicate and Andrew’s journey to Bramber takes days because he stops in several cities.

It’s an emotional and delicate story written in an unconventional way. It is an immersive experience for sure but it is very slow-paced. It’s a quiet character-driven story about two people trying to forget parts of their childhood. Some parts are fantastical and the stories lean on the horror side however, I wouldn’t call this book fantasy or horror. If I had to categorize it, I’d say it’s a literary fiction book with magical realism elements. If you like your books action-packed with a lot of speculative elements, The Dollmaker isn’t the book you’re looking for. However, if you want to read a slow and quiet story about two complex characters, I would highly recommend!



Four stars.

I can safely say that I have never read a book quite like this one, and don’t think I will again! It was a book that challenged me, unsettled me, intrigued me – and, by the end, had completely enchanted me.

The main narrative thread follows Andrew and Brammer, who meet through a shared love of dolls, and an advert for a pen pal that Brammer places in a doll collecting magazine. After exchanging several letters, they soon realise they also share a similar feeling of not quite belonging, of being misfits, and develop a companionship. Andrew decides to embark on a grand quest to meet Brammer – who lives in a mental institution several days’ journey west. Andrew doesn’t let Brammer know that he’s intending to visit her – so I had a very anxious feeling as he travelled west to meet here. How would she react when he suddenly arrives? Will it end in disappointment?

On his journey, Andrew takes a book of fairytales by Ewa Chaplin – a doll maker and author who Brammer has a keen interest in. Short fairytales from this book weave in and out of Andrew and Brammer’s story (which is told through both Andrew’s quest narrative and letters from Brammer to Andrew). These short, eerie stories seduced me – I found them completely bewitching, while at the same time wholly disconcerting. Similar themes run through them of dwarfs, dolls, the grotesque, duchesses, queens, good and evil, magic, carnival, betrayal, revenge. They are shocking and powerful stories – emotion bubbles close to the surface, with an underlying and lurking threat of a downfall to come.They were by far my favourite part of this book.

The format of the whole novel is disjointed, like the individual doll limbs on the book’s front cover, which need to be stitched and glued together. Through this narrative structure, Allan blurs the boundaries of ‘art’ and ‘life’ – similar characters and situations from the fairytales appear in Andrew and Brammer’s own recollections, and the two begin to meld together. This mirroring had a jarring and eerie effect on the me – it was startling to recognise something you’d already seen elsewhere, in a slightly different form. Different modes of art are interrogated throughout the book – paintings, music, antiques, poems, letters. I found this metafictional, self aware style quite challenging at first. Instead of getting lost in this book, I felt I was always being reminded that I was in reading a work of fiction.

We are told near the beginning of the story that dolls do not age – and even though Andrew’s quest to rescue Brammer is very linear, I generally found time to be quite fluid throughout the book. I was not always sure what era all the stories were set in, or what age all the different characters are. This again could be quite disconcerting, for example when a sense of youth is juxtaposed with some very adult themes.

All in all, I didn’t find this a very ‘easy read’ (if that’s what you’re looking for…). But in the end, I found that I had enjoyed the challenge, and ultimately have been left quite astounded by this original and quirky book.

This was a story with a surreal, fairy tale quality to it – the main storyline is formed as a correspondence between two unusual personalities, both are doll enthusiasts and are in some ways very similar but, in others, very different. Their correspondence is interspersed by short stories written by a fictional dollmaker that they both admire, these give the book its fairy tale quality. The stories aren’t necessarily cutesie happily-ever-after types, which is what makes this book stand out.

It wasn’t entirely to my taste as I’m a pretty literal creature, I don’t really enjoy interpreting stories and this book featured unreliable narration as well as ambiguous short stories, which was a bit too much for me to really immerse myself in the story. I do, however, appreciate this this book is going to really suit fans of surreal character studies.

What I did enjoy the most about this book is that the main characters have voices that you don’t often hear in books, their unusual perspectives are really refreshing and make for a good read. The budding friendship between these two characters is really beautiful and gave me the warm fuzzies.

To me, this is a book that's more about the journey than the destination and meant to be savoured.

The doll maker and collector Andrew Garvie, creates beautiful dolls, a calling he discovered after a childhood interest in dolls. Then he answers a personal ad at the back of a collectors magazine and begins a pen pal friendship with Bramber Winters.
With each letter Bramber reveals more of herself, her residence Bodmin Moor institution, her past, and why she is there. With each letter Andrew falls further into the friendship and decides to rescue Bramber.

As Andrew travels through small towns and villages on his journey to Bodmin, he reads a book of fairytales written by the unusual doll maker and story teller Ewa Chaplin, who Bramber hopes to write a book about. Between the stories of both Andrew and Bramber, the fairytales are woven, and we see them reflected and repeated in the experiences of both.

A wonderful novel of a dollmaker travelling to meet a woman whom he has fallen in love with who lives in a kind of home for people who are suffering from mental illnesses. The novel combines the story from Andrew Garvie’s perspective, the letters Bramber writes to him telling her about her day to day life and her past, and the beguiling short stories Andrew is reading by the fictional author and dollmaker Ewa Chaplin. The short stories are original in the way that they leap straight into the stories as if they are almost novels in their own right, and they are full of magic realist wonders, transgressive love stories and populated by little people and people with disabilities and disfigurements. Andrew himself is exceptionally short and I think the way that the characters are portrayed is really well executed. Andrew comes to wonder if the stories are actually influencing his own plot as he sees the similarities in the stories he is reading with what he is currently doing. Whilst Bramber is afflicted by a sense of guilt Andrew has his own demons to contend with - I liked the parts where he has discussions in his head with the doll ‘the Artist’ who orders him around. This is a magical book I devoured.

I really dont know what to make of this book, it was so confusing at first, with the modern day and then the Ewa Chaplin stories. But once I grasped that, it read a bit more smoothly. It was a very strange book, marrying fiction within the real life of the story and how the two characters came together. I have to say I really do not have any feelings about this book, I only finished it to see if the outcome was worth it and I have to say it wasn't.

I read this book courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for a review. My opinions are my own.

I discovered Nina Allan slightly more than a year ago, and I fell in love with her writing in The Rift and The Race; they were some of my favourite novels read last year, so I was beyond excited to get ahold of her newest novel, The Dollmaker, even though the description didn't really appeal to my taste. And really, the novel was both what I love about Allan's writing and what made me wary in the description; the rating of 3.5 stars that I wish I could leave is the reflection of that.

What I loved about Allan's two previous novels and what was realised beautifully here was the way in which the relationship between the frame and the embedded stories is undermined. The characters tell stories about themselves and about the world, and these stories contain further stories. The relationship between fiction and fiction-within-fiction is uncertain and complex; the reader is never sure if the world described is one of the historical past or the present or a fantastical world. There's an effect of disorientation at times; if I interrupted reading in the middle of a chapter, upon returning to the book, I would often find it difficult to find my bearings again, and it was amazing.

The book is also very beautifully written and engrossing, and its characters are as fascinating as the mysteries they slowly reveal.

What didn't quite work for me was the aspect of disability. While this story is essentially about and against oppression and prejudice, I found it occasionally difficult to get through the ablist thoughts of characters and disturbing images the book evoked (particularly with regard to children). I am not entirely convinced that the book succeeds in what it wants to accomplish there, and I found its pessimism almost misanthropic - and that's something I don't really like in fiction.

And my second complaint, predictably, concerns the use of Polish names in the book, which was inconsistent and only partly justifiably, in my opinion.

Nonetheless, I found this book extremely interesting and thought-provoking, and I can't wait to read more from this author. I love her voice and her vision.

The rave reviews surrounding The Dollmaker by Nina Allan had totally whetted my appetite. I was eager to read it. I really thought I would enjoy the story – modern day life mixed with fairy tales.

Sadly, I didn’t like it.

I just didn’t get it. I didn’t understand why the fairy tales mirrored reality so precisely that I felt that I was reading the same story over and over again. Then when the two morphed into one I was thrown even more.

I think to read The Dollmaker you really need to be able to suspend your disbelief because if you start questioning things too much, then you, like me, will probably find the whole thing a bit boring and confusing.

The Dollmaker by Nina Allan is available now.

For more information regarding Riverrun Books (@riverrunbooks) please visit www.riverrunbooks.co.uk.

For more information regarding Quercus Books (QuercusBooks@) please visit their Twitter page.

My thanks to Quercus Books/riverrun for an eARC via NetGalley of Nina Allan’s third novel, ‘The Dollmaker’, in exchange for an honest review.

Andrew Garvie is a creator of exquisite dolls in the traditional style. He has always been something of an outsider. When he sees an advert in a collector’s magazine seeking information on Polish dollmaker, Eva Chaplin, and/or friendship he answers it. Thus, he and Bramber Winters begin a correspondence. Through these letters she slowly reveals details of her strange, sheltered life in an institution on Bodmin Moor.

The structure of this novel is unusual as Allan interweaves Andrew’s story (including his quixotic plan to rescue Bramber and his journey to meet her), Bramber’s letters, and a series of macabre fairytales written by Ewa Chaplin.

I find myself lost for words to describe the beauty and power of Allan’s writing. It is a work of literary fiction that also confidently blends various genres. I personally didn’t have any difficulty with its complex structure as the different sections are quite distinct. The way that Chaplin’s stories were echoed in the lives of Andrew and Bramber created a dreamlike ambiance throughout.

I was captivated by ‘The Dollmaker’ and it is a novel that I intend to reread in order to explore its multi-layered themes, symbolism, and unique structure at a more leisurely pace. It is a novel that I would expect will be ideal for reading groups that are seeking a novel that is more challenging and yet remains accessible.

I also am intrigued by the descriptions of her earlier novels and story collections and look forward to reading more of her work.

I really struggled with this, I just couldn't get into the writing style and found it far too choppy. Likewise I didn't like any of the characters so in the end I didn't finish it. Although I loved the concept and some of the ideas I just wasn't enjoying it.

A multilayered novel that took some getting to grips with.Andrew Garlieston is a man who loves doll almost to the point of obsession. He corresponds regularly to Bamber, a young women incarcerated in an asylum in Cornwall. He decides to set off on a journey to visit her. His journey stop points All bear some significance to him. As he travels he reads short stories by Bambers favourite author, Eva Chaplain and these intersperse the story and his continued correspondence with Bamber.
A challenging read with an interesting style that may take some perseverance to engage fully with the text

The Dollmaker by Nina Allan was a revelation. I knew nothing of the author and her style of writing before starting this and ended up being pleasantly surprised by loving this book. It’s the story of Andrew Garvie and his letters to and from the mysterious Bramber Winters. The highlight for me were the inclusion of the rather dark fairytales which seemed to follow the course of Andrew Garvies own reality. An absolute gem!

The Dollmaker takes us on a journey, following the budding pen-pal relationship between Andrew and Bramber, both doll collectors and enthusiasts. Andrew lives in London, making dolls for a living after developing a passion for them when he was a boy. Bramber is a live-in patient at West End House, an institution located in an isolated part of Cornwall. They develop a bond over their mutual interest of a former doll maker, Ewa Chaplin, who also wrote dark, atmospheric short stories, which are featured throughout the book. Andrew decides that he should visit Bramber, and embarks on a leisurely journey to Cornwall, passing through a number of towns and cities on his way, where he contemplates his life and journey. Allan has created a fairy tale, albeit a very slow moving one, with strange coincidences cropping up that blur the edges of reality just slightly, giving a fantasy element to the story.

A strange book that is difficult to pin down, The Dollmaker by Nina Allan is unlike anything I have read before. It opens by introducing us to the doll maker, Andrew Garvie, a man of diminutive stature who has had a fascination with antique dolls since childhood, and who now creates his own meticulously. When he answers a personal ad in one of his trade magazines, he begins a correspondence with Bramber, a young woman living in an institution who share his love of dolls, but has a mysterious past. Andrew gets it into his head that he needs to rescue Bramber, and begins on a journey to the institute without telling her. To pass the time along the way he reads a collection of short stories written by yet another doll maker, Ewa Chaplin. These strange tales are recounted within the book and seem to carry echoes of the people and events in Andrew's life.
It's a strange and strangely interesting book, about strange people, and as I said unlike anything I have read before. I found it hard to put down, as I tried to put together the three narratives , but in the end the author does manage to weave them together successfully.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

Firstly, I adore this novel. But I will be honest here, I nearly abandoned this novel a couple of times early on. It has an unusual structure, and before I do any research, I’m unsure at to why it is this way and what purpose it serves, and if for any other reason but a demonstration of the author’s ability to write about almost anything and remain captivating. The Dollmaker follows Andrew Garvie, a most peculiar man who is fascinated with dolls, who answers an ad from Bramber Winters, a most peculiar woman who is also fascinated with dolls, seeking to find out more about Ewa Chaplin, a maker of dolls and writer of curious short stories. Thus follows the correspondence between Andrew and Bramber, who reveals she has been living for numerous years at the mysterious West End House, a place full of characters, which she is free to leave but doesn’t. Still, Andrew sets out on a journey to ‘rescue’ her – his words – and on the way intermittently reads Ewa Chaplin’s short stories, of which we are treated to, the first at which served as my first episode of ‘can I be bothered to read this?’. Confession: I skipped through the first short story, as after a couple of pages it wasn’t grabbing me, but I read the others that followed, and thought they were wonderful little eerie nuggets of oddness. It’s interesting to read stories and to then hear a character in the novel’s thoughts about them. Makes them feel a little more real. Was that the point of the stories? Who knows.

The ‘A love story about becoming real’ on the front shouldn’t put off anyone, who, like me, would rather not read love stories, as I think this novel sits more within literary fiction than romance, such is its focus on character development and interesting structure of stories within stories within stories. (A novel is only literary fiction if it is absolutely totally bloody baffling, right?)

I find this book extremely lovely, in the way that it explores characters who to the rest of the world are oddities, misfits, who find a missing connection with each other, and the beauty of them blooming when it happens. We learn more about their lives prior to their current situations, but I get the feeling that it is for context, not explanation, the suggestion that people don’t need reasons for their quirks and the things that make them them, just the freedom to express all that they are.

I wanted the ending to be muddlingly weird, for there to be an epic case of false or mistaken identity, or for one of the main characters to even not exist at all, perhaps even a doll or two to come alive and go on a rampage, but then again, I am as weird as the characters in this book. I won’t give anything away, except that the ending is touching, and provides many answers. Perhaps other readers will be able to pick up even more of them.

5 stars.

The Dollmaker was published by riverrun on 4th April 2019. Thank you to riverrun for the ARC

The Dollmaker is award-winning author Nina Allan's third novel and being the epitome of strange it rather defies classification or categorisation. I have always been drawn to weird or absurdist fiction so this was right up my street. It follows protagonist Andrew who fondly remembers falling in love with a doll, Marina Blue, when he was just a boy leading to his lifelong passion for dolls. He strikes up a friendship with another doll aficionado, a woman who he hopes could be interested in a relationship with him. There are three strands to the plot: Andrew's story, his communication with penpal and possible future partner Bramber and a series of quite creepy fairytales (think Brothers Grimm) which are interspersed throughout.

Allan's writing flows beautifully making it very easy to read it in a single sitting, however, I did find Andrew's journey was a little too slow and drawn out; that is merely a minor point and is, of course, subjective. She writes about neglect and wrongdoing in an engaging manner and you can't help but feel for each of the characters. It's a stark reminder that the way we are brought up can often shape us as people. It meanders at quite a slow pace and has an unusual structure, but once you becomes accustomed to it all it is difficult to put down. This is a very odd novel that will not be for everyone, but those who enjoy offbeat fiction with a dark fairytale vibe will be able to find aspects to love in The Dollmaker.

Many thanks to riverrun for an ARC.

I was so happy when this book was approved. I liked the blurb and I loved the cover (I know you can't judge a book by the cover).
I started the book and I loved the style of writing and was fascinated by the story.
I was waiting for something to happen, but it was like reading a travelogue with some stories and letters in between. Nothing seems to happen and I was bored.
I skimmed the book to the end and something happened but it wasn't memorable.
It's not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to Quercus Books and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

A novel of dolls, dwarves, and doppelgängers for those who enjoyed Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions and Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist.

When dollmaker Andrew Garvie falls in love with his pen-pal Bramber Winter, he sets out on a cross-country journey to rescue her from the remote asylum in which she dwindles. On the way he reads five dark fairy tales by Polish dollmaker Ewa Chaplin - stories which not only unsettle Andrew, but begin to exert their own influence on his actions. Essentially, this is a novel about the influence objects and people have on us.

Nina Allan’s The Dollmaker has elements of folklore, fantasy, and metafiction - and some rather startling illustrations of eyes which make it feel as if the book is watching you. Andrew’s train journey is the framing narrative in which nestle Bramber’s letters to Andrew describing life at the institution, and the short stories Andrew reads en route. In the second half of the book, these three narratives echo and distort each other well, but I found there was so much chopping and changing in the first half that an essential rhythm was only late established. For me the character of Andrew came to life in the Clark Cannings scene and from this point on I enjoyed the novel.

I didn’t get in with this. I didn’t like the stories within a story and I was a bit bored by the letters. I did enjoy the narrative of the main character, but there wasn’t enough of it to make up for the bits I didn’t like. The premise was good - I was intrigued by the dolls and the relationship between the two characters. Not for me though, sorry.