This was an unusual novel, set in 1840s Britain and France and based around a book focused on human development. The narrative follows several different people. Robert Chambers has a huge family of eight children and one baby, holidaying outside Edinburgh while work takes place on their house. They are struggling with their baby who won’t feed well, and they’ve had to hire a wet nurse. Their gardener doesn’t like children and enjoys a drink, but he is interested in the book he sees the wet nurse reading on the origin of creation. The Chamber’s also have Lady Janet staying with them, a connection of family that has fallen on hard times. We also meet Robert Burns, a farmer who is also loves to read. Then there is Mr Stevenson, a stone merchant searching Coquet Isle for rare stone and reading about human creation by evening,

The character I was most intrigued by was the wet nurse Mrs McAdams, especially as her back story is revealed. She left her husband, while pregnant with twins and travelled to Edinburgh to give birth. Sadly, one of the twins died at a month old. She is interested in her family’s origins. Her mother died when she was young, so she never found out who her father was. Her search for her paternity takes her on an intellectual journey, where she thinks about evolution and natural selection. She asks herself questions about disability - why children born with extra fingers or toes are not thought of as superior or further up the evolutionary scale? Having studied Victorian literature at university we looked at science and those publications that made society rethink their traditional Christian views. Publications by Darwin, Freud, Marx and Nietzsche threw a grenade into traditional values. Nietzsche’s proposal that ‘God is dead’, Freud’s theory of the unconscious and Darwin’s assertion that we came from apes all challenge the Biblical creation myth and ideas about our conscience and how much control we have over our behaviour. It’s hard now for us to imagine life without these theories and I think the book is portraying that crisis of faith people felt on encountering these ideas for the first time. This was an idea driven book and I did feel the lack of a plot. I admire the way the characters wrestle with these huge philosophical themes but I didn’t identify with or care much about them.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for this ARC

Thanks to Net Galley and the publisher for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Peg Kingman's "The Great Unknown" manages to be a very surprising combination: it's a historical novel both complicated and entertaining! The complication arises from the weighty topics the book takes on: evolution vs. religion, the meaning of mankind, even the effect of the microscope on women's fashion. The fun be attributed to the realistic and well-crafted time period and the characters - who speak intelligently on everything from geology to territorial marking via dung -- all without feeling preachy or pedantic. I can also credit Kingman's book with making me want to pick up "Victorian Sensation" which discusses the great unknown author at the center of the book. Any book that leads to other books is a great find!

The liberal, indeed revolutionary, household of the Chambers family is the perfect temporary home for Constantia. Living under an assumed name, temporarily in Edinburgh to deliver her babies, she acts as wet nurse to Mrs. Chambers newborn son. The new state of motherhood brings back vividly Constantia’s color and scent-filled memories of her childhood living in India with her mother. The lively intellectualism of teatime in the busy Chambers household encourages her to question origins: of birth, of books, of the natural world itself. Do they matter? Is illegitimacy a sin? Does the author of a book change the book itself?

I raced through the end of the novel to know the outcome of the story, but then immediately returned to the beginning to savor the beautiful passages describing its people and places. A 5*+ read.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

This one is a challenge to categorize as well as to read- and it won't be for everyone. Set in 1840s UK and France, it offers insight more into the Chartist movement (not familiar? I was only vaguely cognizant and had to do some googling) and class issues than it does into its characters, which among them Constantia, the wet nurse. There isn't a straight line narrative plot and it's dialogue heavy as the characters (and there are a lot of them) debate. I learned a bit more than I expected about a variety of things such as bagpipers. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I found this insightful and thought provoking - perfect for fans of literary fiction.

This historical fiction focuses on the mid-19th century as science was making remarkable progress and people were seriously exploring an evolutionary origin of humans.

I found the first couple chapters of this book entertaining and intriguing - a mid-19th century setting in Scotland, a rowdy family with many houseguests, intriguing conversations, a cantankerous elderly woman - but felt that it bogged down in conversation and inner dialogue after a bit. The diverse points of view were an interesting way to illuminate the opposing scientific and religious views of the 19th century but the attempts at a Victorian style novel, while fitting the topic and story lines, wasn’t very satisfying to me, and I felt that the book wandered a great deal.

'Nothing happens; and nothing happens; and still nothing happens. Everything remains the same… or so it seems. But the truth is that everything is changing imperceptibly all the time.'

The Great Unknown set in the 1840's Britain and France, forces one to confront the question that has haunted us all from the dawning of time. What does it mean to be me, to be a human being at all? Who am I? What is meant for me? Where do I come from? What does it all mean? Am I superior to animals, after-all, aren’t I an animal myself? This was a time when everyone alive was challenging the religious beliefs in the name of scientific discovery. This could be seen as dangerous, questioning what we’re meant to blindly believe. Science vs God, even now is rocky terrain but then it could be downright sacrilege.

Then there is the Chartist movement, whose goal during this time was to gain rights and political influence for the working class, which naturally upset the upper classes. Surely you can’t let just anyone have sway in politics, how can the average man carry any weight in the important decisions of one’s time? Everyone has their own view on this.

The novel begins with wet nurse, Mrs. Constantia MacAdam, providing milk for an infant born to a merry, wealthy family- the Chambers. Welcomed into the fold more like a friend than a servant, she grieves the loss of her own twin infant boy while nourishing her surviving twin daughter and the Chamber’s son, born with extra fingers and toes. We learn her name isn’t quite her own, for her past is shadowed by the loss of her mother when she was a little girl, while no true history of her real father remains. Living in a household filled with people of a curious, questioning nature, it’s impossible to not be disturbed by her own bottomless pit of mystery. Separated from her own dear husband, in order to give birth to their twins, and for reasons she will keep to herself, communication is precarious between them. Tormented by her mother’s secrecy before her tragic death, her deep love and memories flit about, unable to secure any solid evidence of her own origins. Her beautiful mother, who lived a bohemian existence, raising her in India, keeping her past veiled left her with endless questions. Is life a twist of fate, are we guided by god, is it orderly, disorderly?

Others think of Mrs. MacAdams as a French hussy, whose terrible fashion sense certainly speaks loudly for her worth, or lack thereof. Good women do not go by false names, and can it be trusted that she is even married at all? But Mrs. Chambers knows that “folk may have perfectly innocent reasons for preserving a discreet anonymity”. In this household too, children are permitted to read scandalous books, such as the Vestiges. An anonymous book published that dealt with speculative natural history, embraced by polite society, inspiring people’s thinking to turn towards science, before Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published. Naturally to the clergy minded, it was criticized. Nature should be proof of God’s existence, not an argument against it! Throughout this book, evolution is a theme but so too is the strange happenstance that occurs in so many of our lives. Which do we cling to? Is it like Lady Janet believes? That “incalculable harm may be wrought by such a book”? Certainly there can be nothing evil about looking to fossils, to trying to find answers and meaning? Nothing wrong in studying the evolution of creatures, plants… Just as intelligent and progressive as the family, she fits in perfectly- sharing a love of fossils with Mrs.Chambers.

It is a novel of not just self discovery but of trying to embrace some sort of order in this, the great unknown. Everyone in the book engages in the new discoveries, even debating geological matters. Each has their say. Political matters account for much of the novel too, as all men who work this earth should have a voice, and risk death to use it. To think what we read can be a threat to the old ways.

There is scandal and shame in Mrs. MacAdam’s single mother’s past, but she will, as the strange whims of fate have it, get to the root of the truth.

The book began slowly and eventually I began to be more invested in Constantia’s story. There are deeper questions that may exasperate some readers and it can feel like a lesson at school which is great if it’s your fancy and you want to learn about geology, and the shift of scientific thinking among the masses.

Publication Date: February 18, 2020

W.W. & Norton Company

It was a time of social turmoil.

The working man wanted his voice heard in government. The Chartist movement was met with a violent reaction from the powers that be; the leaders were imprisoned or they fled the country.

It was an age of science.

Gentlefolk became amateur naturalists, collecting specimens of life living and dead. Fossil discoveries caused great wonder. Theories were created to explain the fossil records, some contorted to fit the Christian idea of time and history. Scandalous books were published suggesting a natural history that upset the Christian hegemony.

My Victorian Age professor had our class read pivotal books published in 1859, including The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The professor told us that the ideas behind Darwin's book had been around; Darwin's genius was to put the puzzle pieces together, grounded in sound scientific research. Darwin dragged his feet publishing his theory, knowing the havoc it would bring.

The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman is set in 1846 when people were beginning to think about the questions Darwin finally, publicly, addressed in 1859.

There is a mysterious woman at the heart of the novel who goes by the alias Mrs. McAdams. She left her husband and traveled to the city to give birth to twins, one of whom died a month later. She is enlisted to be a wet nurse to a brilliant family who warmly welcomes her.

Mrs. McAdams struggles with issues of identity. Her mother's early death left clouded her true paternity. And she wonders about the big questions: are we ruled by chance, nature, or God? What does it mean to be human? What separates us from other creatures?

Several books are central in the novel, books that arouse deep thoughts from the characters. One is the 1845 best-selling, iconoclastic Vestiges of the National History of Creation. Another is the 1831 On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which sounds like a yawner, but its appendix included a discussion of natural selection.

Vestiges became a best-seller. It appears and reappears in the novel, traveling from hand to hand.

They were dangerous things, book; best locked safely away in cages, like fierce beasts in a menagerie. ~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

Mrs. McAdams's backstory is slowly revealed. Her quest to find her natural father takes her on an interesting and surprising journey. She questions many things--why a baby with extra digits is not embraced as an evolutionary improvement; whether things happen by chance or design; if humankind has the power--clearly, it does have the will--to reverse the spinning of the galaxies.

The Great Unknown is an idea-driven story, and I found myself intrigued to read on for the questions posed are timeless.

As a quilter interested in quilt and fiber history, I was interested in Mrs. McAdam's vocation creating 'bizarres', designs for roller-printed cottons that were popular in the 1840s. Her designs were inspired by the minuscule life she discovered under the powerful new microscopes. Science had even invaded fashion! Colors, too. The newly discovered aniline dyes replaced the plant-based dyes, and new colors rose to popularity: mauve and purple, chrome yellow and orange, and greens that did not fade to blue or tan or rely on arsenic.

Our heroine's journey takes her into her past to discover her true family roots before she returns to her husband. All their hopes are realized in a strange and circular way in a satisfying resolution.

In the 19th c, science was embraced as a panacea to society's ills, a way to reverse the natural order. Science disturbed the status quo and challenged Biblical authority, upended humanity's place in the universe and scheme of things.

But as Mrs. McAdams and we know, it appears that chance is what really rules the universe.

I was granted access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

There are some good bones to this novel, but it just didn't quite pan out for me. The overabundance of semicolons sort of put me off from the start (gave the prose a jerky and breathy quality which I didn't care for). Some good character building that was chopped up with heavy dialogue. Overall, the story just didn't quite gel for me.

What does it mean to be human? This premise is explored through different characters connected by a book on human development.

Robert Chambers family is spending summer outside Edinburgh as their house in the city is being renovated. They have eight children and one infant, whom they struggle to feed as milk sickens him. A wet nurse is hired. As busy as they are, they are excited about a book exploring natural law of creation.

Mrs. MacAdam, the wet-nurse, is living with them. She is still nursing her one twin child. She lost the other.

Their summer house came with a gardener, Mr. Gunn, who doesn’t like children. He also has a drinking problem. One day, he saw the wet-nurse reading the book about the origin of creation. He borrowed the same book six months earlier and read it overnight. By now he memorized many passages from it.

Robert Burns is a farmer and avid reader with a plow in his hands and a book in his pocket.

Lady Janet, a connection of Mr. Chamber’s brother’s wife, is now staying with Chambers as she is poor. They can’t turn her out, so they patiently suffer her company.

As Mr. Stevenson, stone merchant, searches for a valuable stone on Coquet Isle during the day, he fills his evenings with reading a book about history of creation.

It seems as there is no end to the characters and no beginning of the plot. An intriguing book sounds as a golden thread – enough for a good plot, but it seems as plot is missing.

At some points, the story is very dialogue driven. – I felt disconnected.

When it is character driven, I felt connected.

There is no doubt that the story is penned by a talented writer. However personally, I prefer more cohesive stories with less rather than more dialogue. And this story is so opposite of what I like to read. Therefore, don’t get discourage from reading this book by this review.