The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar

It is 1785 and merchant Jonah Hancock has to cope with the news that one of his captains has just sold his ship in exchange for what appears to be a little mermaid. It’s dead, hardly attractive, but when news of it flies around London society, Mr Hancock realises that here is the chance to recoup his losses. And when Mrs Chappell, the ‘abbess’ of a fashionable ‘nunnery’, gives him a great deal of money to display his mermaid at her infamous parties for a week, Mr Hancock not only has his eyes opened, he also gets a little more than he bargained for.

Angelica Neal is quite possibly London’s most beautiful courtesan and she is newly unleashed on London once more (now that her Duke has died, conveniently in time for the season). Mrs Neal must look to her future and that means she must marry. That’s easier said and done for one in her position. Mrs Chappell is keen for Angelica to return to her nunnery but Angelica has grander plans. She also wants a mermaid of her own, and not some dead ugly little thing on the mantelpiece. And Mr Hancock will do everything in his power to give Angelica her wish.

This remarkable debut brings Georgian London alive, or at least those parts of it that make their living, or take their pleasure, in its fashionable ‘nunneries’ or brothels. Its is gorgeously written, filled with all those little luxurious details about such things as clothing, furnishings, objects – from stockings and stays to chairs, wallpaper, gardens and grottoes. Everything is so vibrant and rich. And the wit with which the inhabitants of these spectacular dresses and parlours speak is delightful.

What is especially appealing is the distance between the assumed elegance and refinement of Mrs Chappell’s brothel and the reality of what actually goes on within its perfumed rooms. The girls are all taught manners, languages, needlework and music, as if they are all in training to be perfect ladies of society. And yet these are girls who are owned, who rarely meet other women apart from themselves. They exist in a beautiful bubble for the enjoyment of men. At times this is brought home, particularly in the character of Polly, who, as a black young woman, is an exotic object of curiosity and lust, little more than that. Little different are the black footmen with their powdered hair. There is a dark side to this world, fed upon by hypocritical, lecherous men, controlled by pandering painted grotesque women and permitted by corrupt officials. There is suffering.

Angelica Neal is such a fascinating character. At times she may seem shallow and grasping, but how could she be anything else? Her story demonstrates just how vulnerable women like this can be, while a friend demonstrates how far a few, but just a few, can rise. There is a goal but not many at all can achieve it. I felt such empathy for Angelica, such warmth. Her character evolves through the novel and it’s shown so beautifully by Imogen Hermes Gowar.

Polly is somebody I would have liked to have seen much more of. She is brilliantly drawn and her story has such potential. I could easily read a novel just about Polly, if written as well as this. As for Mr Hancock, he is rather overshadowed by the novel’s astonishing women, but there is something so poignant about his belief that somewhere, in a parallel universe maybe, still lives his son who was born dead. He imagines the boy growing to manhood near him, like a shadow, by his side. Mrs Chappell is a glorious scene stealer. I loved the descriptions of her. She is truly revolting, with her cauliflower flesh, feeding on her girls.

This is historical fiction but, as you might expect in a novel with mermaids, there is a fantasy element but it is delicately done. The final third of the book takes us further into strangeness than the rest and I must admit that I preferred the preceding two thirds, but there is a real beauty about what happens. We can be in no doubt, though, that the true mermaids are the human sirens who move through this novel, bewitching men and being betrayed by men. Angelica Neal is the subject of The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock and she is enchanting, as is this whole marvellous, witty and elegant novel. Do not miss it. The hardback is itself a thing of great beauty.

Late one night in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock is startled when one of his sea captains arrives unexpectedly at his door. The captain has made what seems to be a terrible bargain: he’s sold one of Jonah’s ships in exchange for a dessicated curiosity, the preserved corpse of what he claims is a mermaid. Jonah, used only to the world of trade, is bewildered by the idea of exhibiting the creature, but determined to get at least some of his money back. As the mermaid catches the imagination of London’s fashionable society, Jonah is drawn into the orbit of the celebrated prostitute Angelica Neal, who is irritated by being ordered to charm this uninspiring man. But as the pull of the mermaid grows ever greater, we begin to wonder whether what Jonah has acquired really is just a freak and a fake, or whether there is something more sinister going on.

Imogen Hermes Gowar’s debut, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, has already been compared to Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill and Jessie Burton’s The Miniaturist, among others. It certainly depicts eighteenth-century society with as much vigour and fun as Spufford, and while the style is a light pastiche, it’s easier for the modern reader to get their head around than Spufford’s deliberately ornate prose. And like Burton’s debut, it tries to strike a compromise between historical realism and magical goings-on. Funnily enough, like The Miniaturist, I don’t think it quite succeeds – but the novel as a whole is so incredibly immersive that I could forgive it, even if I wanted to hear more about the mermaids who seem to be living their mysterious lives far beneath the waves. As the plot unfolds, Gowar keeps confounding our expectations; nothing about this novel is at all predictable, except perhaps for the spoiler given away by the title (which could, in my opinion, have been avoided by simply calling the book The Mermaid and Mr Hancock, even though the aptness of the current title becomes clear by the end of the novel).

The development of the central relationship between the flawed characters of Jonah and Angelica is assured and gripping, but I was even more taken by Gowar’s handling of the secondary female cast. The gaggle of courtesans that Angelica has trained among could easily be reduced into silly ciphers, but Gowar is careful to give them each lives and personalities of their own, especially Polly, a mixed-race woman who is becoming increasingly aware of how she is treated as an exotic curiosity by the society around her. Sukie, Jonah’s niece, who lives with him and keeps house, is equally engaging as she asserts her own intelligence and agency. In a different vein, but equally well-drawn, is Mrs Chappell, the ‘bawd’ who makes her living through the girls that she nurtures into prostitution, whose story has a horribly memorable ending that reminded me, oddly, of an equally shocking but very different scene in Golden Hill, perhaps because of the casualness of both books’ tone.

Those who come looking for mermaids might be slightly disappointed – but it looks like there are plenty of mermaids to come in fiction in 2018, from Kirsty Logan’s The Gloaming, which promises ‘a queer mermaid love story’, to Louise O’Neill’s The Surface Breaks, a retelling of the Little Mermaid. In the meantime, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a wonderful historical novel, and I can’t wait to see what Gowar writes next.

I straight up loved this. Jonah Hancock is a staid merchant in Georgian London, whose most reliable captain has just sold his entire ship for what he says is a mermaid. Aghast, but needing to recoup his losses, Hancock exhibits the mermaid in a public house, to great acclaim. Its success leads him to the courtesan Angelica Neal, with whom he begins to fall in love… To say more would be to give the whole game away, but here’s a recommendation: anyone who loved Golden Hill or The Essex Serpent will adore this. It’s got spectacularly fluid writing with just the right level of period detail, perfect comic touches, and an atmosphere of total sumptuousness.

Likened to the much lauded Essex Serpent and already touted as one of the best fiction books of 2018, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on a copy of this title.
The author is impressively adept at weaving an interesting and original storyline with such evocative description. I am amazed at such an accomplished debut. I shall certainly keep an eye out for future publications by Ms Gowar.
It is by turns fun, grotesque, romantic, maudlin, sumptuous and occasionally quite risqué. I can easily imagine it on the big screen.
I wasn’t disappointed and wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it which, from me, is praise indeed.