![]() ![]() The characters never surprise us for a moment, never truly spring to life. It’s a Dickensian novel, with a clutch of promising characters like the laudanum-addicted owner of the doll factory, a street urchin who finds dead things and sells them to the taxidermist, and, of course, two sisters trapped by fate in their miserable jobs and straitened lives.īut the more time we spend with these people, the less interesting they become. Another man, Silas, is obsessed with displaying his taxidermy skills at the Great Exhibition and adding Iris to his “private collection.” One of the artists in the PBR becomes determined to paint Iris, bewitched by her unusual looks and, soon, her talent. She wastes her talents by crafting dolls in the window of a little store, on display side by side with her pox-scarred sister. ![]() Iris, a striking and talented would-be painter who is trapped by circumstance, connects the two worlds. Debut novelist Elizabeth Macneal sets The Doll Factory in Victorian England, with the backdrop of both the Great Exhibition of 1851 and an artistic revolution led by the self-dubbed Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. ![]()
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