The Brooknerian

Aurora Floyd is an heiress, handsome and rich, with a native cleverness. A year of her life is mysteriously missing, but this is 1860s sensation fiction and the seasoned reader will spot the clues. When she marries a bluff young landowner all seems set fair, till a face from her past appears and the secrecy and double-dealing run out of control. Written hot on the heels of M. E. Braddon's other famous bigamy novel, Lady Audley's Secret , Aurora Floyd is a fast, racy, slangy read. Its atmospherics are notably creepy; Braddon, like Wilkie Collins, is a very visual writer. The novel builds to a climax set in high summer: Braddon is brilliant at night scenes. She owes debts to Dickens too in her fondness for low eccentrics and detailed lists. The higher-class scenes feel a little like Trollope. But of course Trollope also sometimes sounds a little like Braddon, or at least he does in The Eustace Diamonds , his own attempt at the sensation genre. Except that Trollope is too honest, ...