Things in Jars
A Novel
By Jess Kidd
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Table of Contents
About The Book
In this “miraculous and thrilling” (Diane Setterfield, #1 New York Times bestselling author) mystery for fans of The Essex Serpent and The Book of Speculation, Victorian London comes to life as an intrepid female sleuth wades through a murky world of collectors and criminals to recover a remarkable child.
Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.
Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.
Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history” (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.
Bridie Devine—flame-haired, pipe-smoking detective extraordinaire—is confronted with the most baffling puzzle yet: the kidnapping of Christabel Berwick, secret daughter of Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick, and a peculiar child whose reputed supernatural powers have captured the unwanted attention of collectors in this age of discovery.
Winding her way through the sooty streets of Victorian London, Bridie won’t rest until she finds the young girl, even if it means unearthing secrets about her past that she’d rather keep buried. Luckily, her search is aided by an enchanting cast of characters, including a seven-foot-tall housemaid; a melancholic, tattoo-covered ghost; and an avuncular apothecary. But secrets abound in this foggy underworld where nothing is quite what it seems.
Blending darkness and light, Things in Jars is a stunning, “richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history” (Booklist, starred review) that explores what it means to be human in inhumane times.
Excerpt
Prologue PROLOGUE
As pale as a grave grub she’s an eyeful.
She looks up at him, startled, from the bed. Her pale eyes flitting fishy: intruder—lantern—door—intruder. As if she’s trying to work out how they all connect, with her eyes cauled and clouded.
Is she blind?
No. She sees him all right; he knows that she sees him. Now her eyes are following him as he steals nearer.
She’s pretty.
She’s more than pretty. She’s a churchyard angel, a marble carving, with her ivory curls and her pale, pale stony eyes. But not stone—brightening pearl, oh soft hued!
He could touch her: stroke her cheek, hold the wee point of her chin, wind her white curls around his finger.
Her lips are beginning to move, pouting and posturing, as if she’s working up to something, as if she’s working up to sound.
Without further thought he puts his hand over her mouth, his skin dark against hers in the lantern light. She frowns and her feet beat an angry tattoo despite the restraints and the coverlet is off. She has two legs, like a girl. Two thin white legs and two thin white arms and not much else in between.
Then she stops and lies still, panting.
The touch of her: she is like nothing in nature. Skin waxy and damp, breath cold: an unnatural coldness, like a corpse living.
And that smell again, stronger now, the sharp salt of the open ocean, an inky seaweed tang.
She fixes him with her pearly eyes. He feels the slick nubs of her teeth and the quick, wet probe of her tongue on his hand.
The man fancies that his head is opening like an easy oyster, the child is tapping and probing, her fingers are inside his mind. Touching, teasing the quivering insides. She is dabbling and grabbing as with a jar of minnows, splashing and peering as with a rock pool. She hooks a memory with her little finger and drags it out, and then another and another. One by one the child finds them, his memories. She cups them in her palm, shimmering, each a perfect tear.
A boy slips on wet cobbles, himself, following a cart with a potato in his hand.
A woman turns in a doorway with the sun on her hair, oh, his brother’s wife!
A four-day-old foal stands in a green field, a pure white flash on its lovely nose.
The child tips her palm and watches the tears roll away.
Panic floods the man. Something swells in him—a pure and compelling disgust, a strong sudden urge to finish this creature off. To throttle her, stove in her face, snap her neck as cleanly as a young rabbit’s.
A voice inside him, the lisping voice of a child, mocks him. Isn’t he the most ruthless of bastards, wouldn’t he smother his own mother without a care? Hasn’t he done all things, terrible things, not stinted on the things he’s done? And here he is frightened to grant the kindest of mercies.
The man looks at the child in dismay and the child looks back at him.
He loosens his grip on her and takes out his knife.
A lantern dips and flares in the doorway and here’s the nurse. An ex-convict with a few years on her and a lame leg, clean of garb but not of mouth, used to bad business. Likes it, even. The others behind like her personal guard—two men, neckerchiefs up around their faces. Odd birds; elbows tucked in, heads swiveling, light-stepping, listening, blinking. With every step they expect an ambush.
“Don’t touch her,” the nurse says to him. “Get away from her.”
The man, looking up, hesitates, and the child bites him, a nip of surprising sharpness. He pulls his hand away in surprise and sees a line of puncture holes, small but deep.
The nurse pushes past him to the side of the bed, glancing at his hand. “You’ll regret that, my tulip.”
She makes a show of pulling on fine chain-mail gloves and unhooks the restraints that hold the child to the bed, dressing her in a harness of strong material, one limb at a time, buckling the child’s arms across her chest, lashing her legs together. The child lunges, open mawed.
The man stands dazed, flexing his hand. Red lines track from palm to wrist to elbow, the teeth marks turn mulberry, then black. He twists his forearm and presses his skin. Sweat beading on his forehead, his lip. What kind of child bites like this, like a rat? He imagines her venom—he feels it—coursing through him, from arm to heart, lungs to bowels, fingertips to feet. A blistering poison spreads, a sudden fire burning itself out as it travels. Then the lines fade and the marks dull to no more than pinpricks.
All the time the creature watches him, her eyes darkening—a trick of the lamplight, surely! Two eyes of polished jet, their surfaces flat, so strangely flat.
The nurse is speaking low, standing back to direct. “Roll her, bag her, make haste, watch her mouth.”
They wrap the child in canvas, a staysail to make a hammock of sorts.
The man, manipulating his arm, examining the pinpricks, suddenly finds himself beyond words. He makes a sound, a vowel sound, followed by a string of gargled consonants. He drops to his knees, like one devotional, and falls backward onto the hearthrug. He would scream if he could, but he can only reach out. He lies gasping like a landed catch.
From the floor he watches the two men lift the bundle between them. They move with deliberation, as if underwater.
The nurse limps over, lantern in hand, and looks down at the man. Her diagnosis: he is in a bad way, face as gray as his county crop. Not old but already life-waned—and now this.
He begins to sob.
The nurse could sob, too, for the loss of a good thief, the kind who’d abstract the teeth from your head without the opening of your mouth.
She kneels with difficulty. “Close your eyes, lad,” she whispers. “It will help me no end.”
Trussed in a canvas hammock she’s no weight. But the two men would carry a far heavier burden with greater ease. Of course they’d humored the nurse, heard her stories in the tavern with a few inside them. But they see it now, in the child, as she said they would: all kinds of wrong.
What of the man fallen? They balked to touch him after. The carrying of him would be worse than the leaving of him and they feel the leaving keenly. The child swings swaddled between them, big eyed in the lantern dimmed; oh, they see it now, in her. By the time they reach the landing the men are sweating with the effort of not dashing her head against the wall. One would shoot her through the eye in a heartbeat; the other would cut her throat in a blink. At the top of the stairs they are in danger of hurling her down.
The nurse keeps them in check. Giving whispered orders, steadying them with her strong fingers on arms and ribs.
Bringing them back to the job at hand, for the money.
“Don’t think on it!” The nurse speaks urgent and low. “Don’t think on anything. Hoist her, aye, and we’ll be gone.”
The big house is silent tonight, but for our intruders moving through corridors with their trussed burden and breath-held shuffle. Awake to loose floorboards and creaking doors and light sleepers.
But the servants slumber on. The housekeeper, tidy bedded, neat of nightcap and frill (like a spoon put away for best), inspects the linen cupboards of her dreams. Smiling at immaculate piles, heaven fresh, as clean as clouds. The butler, proper, even in his nightshirted sleep, patrols an endless cellar. The bottles giggle in dark corners. They ease out their corks and call to him in honeyed voices. They sing songs of laden vines and sunny hillsides and duty forgotten—liquid bewitchment! He grips his lantern and will not stop. The housemaids, in their attic nests, are dreaming of omnibuses and pantomimes. The cook snores fruity, unpeeled, and well soaked under warm sheets, as solid and brandy scented as plum pudding. She dreams of matchless soufflés; she hunts them down as she sails in a saucepan over a gravy sea. All are senseless in the tucked-in, heavy-breathing, before-dawn quiet.
The big house is silent tonight, but for our intruders, hurrying out of the servants’ door.
The dogs lie poisoned in the yard, their muzzles flecked with spittle, a breeze ruffling their fur. This is the breeze that came over the sea, miles inland, past wood, fields, and lane to whisk the gravel on the drive and dance around the rooftop chimney pots and whistle through the keyholes.
The mice are wakeful and so, too, is the mean-eyed kitchen cat who needles after their fat pelts, sly and silent. This snake-tailed stalker watches the figures hasten across the cobbled courtyard, throwing moonlit shadows in their wake. The barn owl sees them as they round the house. She ghosts above on silent wings.
The lord of the manor. He, too, is awake.
A lamp burns in his study as he frets and puzzles, considers and adjusts. He bends over his writing, his handsome whiskers peppered with gray, his brow furrowed. He could be a fortune-teller, the way he’s inventing the future, coaxing and muttering it into being.
The shadows pass outside, crossing the terrace.
Perhaps hearing their footsteps, the lord of the manor looks to the window but, remarking no change in the night sky, returns to his plans.
The shadows move quickly over the lawn, toward the gate, two with swag slung between them, one following, limping.
The bundle is cradled over the ground. The child feels the grass whip under her canvas hammock. She feels the night air on her face and takes a breath of it and lets out a sigh you can’t hear.
The sea rocked asleep, now wakes and answers, a refrain of waves and shale song. The rain in the sky that is yet to fall, answers; a storm gathers. All the rivers and streams and bogs and lakes and fens and puddles and horse troughs and wishing wells wake and answer, adding their voices: faint and rushing, purling and gurgling, muddy and clear.
The child looks up. For the first time she can see the stars!
She smiles at them, and the stars look back at her and shiver.
Then they begin to burn brighter, with renewed fever, in the deep dark ocean of the sky.
As pale as a grave grub she’s an eyeful.
She looks up at him, startled, from the bed. Her pale eyes flitting fishy: intruder—lantern—door—intruder. As if she’s trying to work out how they all connect, with her eyes cauled and clouded.
Is she blind?
No. She sees him all right; he knows that she sees him. Now her eyes are following him as he steals nearer.
She’s pretty.
She’s more than pretty. She’s a churchyard angel, a marble carving, with her ivory curls and her pale, pale stony eyes. But not stone—brightening pearl, oh soft hued!
He could touch her: stroke her cheek, hold the wee point of her chin, wind her white curls around his finger.
Her lips are beginning to move, pouting and posturing, as if she’s working up to something, as if she’s working up to sound.
Without further thought he puts his hand over her mouth, his skin dark against hers in the lantern light. She frowns and her feet beat an angry tattoo despite the restraints and the coverlet is off. She has two legs, like a girl. Two thin white legs and two thin white arms and not much else in between.
Then she stops and lies still, panting.
The touch of her: she is like nothing in nature. Skin waxy and damp, breath cold: an unnatural coldness, like a corpse living.
And that smell again, stronger now, the sharp salt of the open ocean, an inky seaweed tang.
She fixes him with her pearly eyes. He feels the slick nubs of her teeth and the quick, wet probe of her tongue on his hand.
The man fancies that his head is opening like an easy oyster, the child is tapping and probing, her fingers are inside his mind. Touching, teasing the quivering insides. She is dabbling and grabbing as with a jar of minnows, splashing and peering as with a rock pool. She hooks a memory with her little finger and drags it out, and then another and another. One by one the child finds them, his memories. She cups them in her palm, shimmering, each a perfect tear.
A boy slips on wet cobbles, himself, following a cart with a potato in his hand.
A woman turns in a doorway with the sun on her hair, oh, his brother’s wife!
A four-day-old foal stands in a green field, a pure white flash on its lovely nose.
The child tips her palm and watches the tears roll away.
Panic floods the man. Something swells in him—a pure and compelling disgust, a strong sudden urge to finish this creature off. To throttle her, stove in her face, snap her neck as cleanly as a young rabbit’s.
A voice inside him, the lisping voice of a child, mocks him. Isn’t he the most ruthless of bastards, wouldn’t he smother his own mother without a care? Hasn’t he done all things, terrible things, not stinted on the things he’s done? And here he is frightened to grant the kindest of mercies.
The man looks at the child in dismay and the child looks back at him.
He loosens his grip on her and takes out his knife.
A lantern dips and flares in the doorway and here’s the nurse. An ex-convict with a few years on her and a lame leg, clean of garb but not of mouth, used to bad business. Likes it, even. The others behind like her personal guard—two men, neckerchiefs up around their faces. Odd birds; elbows tucked in, heads swiveling, light-stepping, listening, blinking. With every step they expect an ambush.
“Don’t touch her,” the nurse says to him. “Get away from her.”
The man, looking up, hesitates, and the child bites him, a nip of surprising sharpness. He pulls his hand away in surprise and sees a line of puncture holes, small but deep.
The nurse pushes past him to the side of the bed, glancing at his hand. “You’ll regret that, my tulip.”
She makes a show of pulling on fine chain-mail gloves and unhooks the restraints that hold the child to the bed, dressing her in a harness of strong material, one limb at a time, buckling the child’s arms across her chest, lashing her legs together. The child lunges, open mawed.
The man stands dazed, flexing his hand. Red lines track from palm to wrist to elbow, the teeth marks turn mulberry, then black. He twists his forearm and presses his skin. Sweat beading on his forehead, his lip. What kind of child bites like this, like a rat? He imagines her venom—he feels it—coursing through him, from arm to heart, lungs to bowels, fingertips to feet. A blistering poison spreads, a sudden fire burning itself out as it travels. Then the lines fade and the marks dull to no more than pinpricks.
All the time the creature watches him, her eyes darkening—a trick of the lamplight, surely! Two eyes of polished jet, their surfaces flat, so strangely flat.
The nurse is speaking low, standing back to direct. “Roll her, bag her, make haste, watch her mouth.”
They wrap the child in canvas, a staysail to make a hammock of sorts.
The man, manipulating his arm, examining the pinpricks, suddenly finds himself beyond words. He makes a sound, a vowel sound, followed by a string of gargled consonants. He drops to his knees, like one devotional, and falls backward onto the hearthrug. He would scream if he could, but he can only reach out. He lies gasping like a landed catch.
From the floor he watches the two men lift the bundle between them. They move with deliberation, as if underwater.
The nurse limps over, lantern in hand, and looks down at the man. Her diagnosis: he is in a bad way, face as gray as his county crop. Not old but already life-waned—and now this.
He begins to sob.
The nurse could sob, too, for the loss of a good thief, the kind who’d abstract the teeth from your head without the opening of your mouth.
She kneels with difficulty. “Close your eyes, lad,” she whispers. “It will help me no end.”
Trussed in a canvas hammock she’s no weight. But the two men would carry a far heavier burden with greater ease. Of course they’d humored the nurse, heard her stories in the tavern with a few inside them. But they see it now, in the child, as she said they would: all kinds of wrong.
What of the man fallen? They balked to touch him after. The carrying of him would be worse than the leaving of him and they feel the leaving keenly. The child swings swaddled between them, big eyed in the lantern dimmed; oh, they see it now, in her. By the time they reach the landing the men are sweating with the effort of not dashing her head against the wall. One would shoot her through the eye in a heartbeat; the other would cut her throat in a blink. At the top of the stairs they are in danger of hurling her down.
The nurse keeps them in check. Giving whispered orders, steadying them with her strong fingers on arms and ribs.
Bringing them back to the job at hand, for the money.
“Don’t think on it!” The nurse speaks urgent and low. “Don’t think on anything. Hoist her, aye, and we’ll be gone.”
The big house is silent tonight, but for our intruders moving through corridors with their trussed burden and breath-held shuffle. Awake to loose floorboards and creaking doors and light sleepers.
But the servants slumber on. The housekeeper, tidy bedded, neat of nightcap and frill (like a spoon put away for best), inspects the linen cupboards of her dreams. Smiling at immaculate piles, heaven fresh, as clean as clouds. The butler, proper, even in his nightshirted sleep, patrols an endless cellar. The bottles giggle in dark corners. They ease out their corks and call to him in honeyed voices. They sing songs of laden vines and sunny hillsides and duty forgotten—liquid bewitchment! He grips his lantern and will not stop. The housemaids, in their attic nests, are dreaming of omnibuses and pantomimes. The cook snores fruity, unpeeled, and well soaked under warm sheets, as solid and brandy scented as plum pudding. She dreams of matchless soufflés; she hunts them down as she sails in a saucepan over a gravy sea. All are senseless in the tucked-in, heavy-breathing, before-dawn quiet.
The big house is silent tonight, but for our intruders, hurrying out of the servants’ door.
The dogs lie poisoned in the yard, their muzzles flecked with spittle, a breeze ruffling their fur. This is the breeze that came over the sea, miles inland, past wood, fields, and lane to whisk the gravel on the drive and dance around the rooftop chimney pots and whistle through the keyholes.
The mice are wakeful and so, too, is the mean-eyed kitchen cat who needles after their fat pelts, sly and silent. This snake-tailed stalker watches the figures hasten across the cobbled courtyard, throwing moonlit shadows in their wake. The barn owl sees them as they round the house. She ghosts above on silent wings.
The lord of the manor. He, too, is awake.
A lamp burns in his study as he frets and puzzles, considers and adjusts. He bends over his writing, his handsome whiskers peppered with gray, his brow furrowed. He could be a fortune-teller, the way he’s inventing the future, coaxing and muttering it into being.
The shadows pass outside, crossing the terrace.
Perhaps hearing their footsteps, the lord of the manor looks to the window but, remarking no change in the night sky, returns to his plans.
The shadows move quickly over the lawn, toward the gate, two with swag slung between them, one following, limping.
The bundle is cradled over the ground. The child feels the grass whip under her canvas hammock. She feels the night air on her face and takes a breath of it and lets out a sigh you can’t hear.
The sea rocked asleep, now wakes and answers, a refrain of waves and shale song. The rain in the sky that is yet to fall, answers; a storm gathers. All the rivers and streams and bogs and lakes and fens and puddles and horse troughs and wishing wells wake and answer, adding their voices: faint and rushing, purling and gurgling, muddy and clear.
The child looks up. For the first time she can see the stars!
She smiles at them, and the stars look back at her and shiver.
Then they begin to burn brighter, with renewed fever, in the deep dark ocean of the sky.
Reading Group Guide
This reading group guide for Things in Jars includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Jess Kidd. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.
Introduction
In the dark underbelly of Victorian London, a formidable female sleuth is pulled into a macabre world of fanatical anatomists and crooked surgeons while investigating the kidnapping of an extraordinary child in this gothic mystery.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Jess Kidd evokes Victorian London through all five senses. What descriptions brought the city alive for you? Were there any parts of Kidd’s London that felt familiar, or some that felt new?
2. Gan Murphy advised Bridie, “When in doubt, take it apart, girl” (page 80). How does Bridie “take things apart” in Things in Jars?
3. The detective is a familiar figure in Victorian-era fiction. Discuss how Kidd subverted your expectations of a traditional detective—or did she?
4. How would you describe Mrs. Bibby? What defines her as a character?
5. In addition to the merrow, there are many references to mythology from various cultures, including character names like Euryale (one of the Greek Gorgons and a sister of Medusa), Father Thames, and Herne the Hunter, and creatures such as the kraken and the raven. How do these uses of mythology influence the tone and spirit of the novel?
6. Bridie has two love interests in the novel: Ruby Doyle, and Valentine Rose of Scotland Yard. What do the two men have in common? How are they different?
7. Were you surprised to learn who attacked Eliza? How does the revelation affect Bridie?
8. Storytelling is woven into Things in Jars in various ways, including through folklore and family histories. What do you think the author is trying to achieve with these layers of storytelling?
9. How do the worlds of magical realism and science complement each other in this novel? Do you think the author blends them together successfully?
10. There are many writers, poets, and works of literature mentioned by Kidd, including Charles Dickens. In what ways do you see a Dickensian influence in Things in Jars? What elements of plot, characterization, and setting remind you of his novels?
11. What aspect of Christabel/Sibéal most intrigued you? Although this character does not speak, what are you able to learn about her personality? What do you think she and Bridie might have in common?
12. How did you react after learning the truth about Ruby Doyle? Discuss your impression of Bridie and Ruby’s relationship from start to finish.
13. Transformation is at the center of Things in Jars: a child transforms into a mermaid; Bridie remakes herself in childhood and dons disguises throughout her investigation; Cora’s life is changed by a new love; characters live, die, and even return as ghosts. In your opinion, which character undergoes the greatest transformation, and why?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Research mythological sea creatures from other cultures and read a folktale about one of them. Consider in what ways those tales resemble the story of the merrow in Things in Jars, and how they differ.
2. As a group, visit a local natural history museum—you might find some “things in jars.” Are there any displays or specimens from the Victorian era? In what ways do they differ from more modern artifacts?
3. If your reading group has not yet read Jess Kidd’s other novels, Himself and Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, choose one of them and discuss it at your next gathering. What similarities do they share with Things in Jars? Differences? What themes do you think interest Jess Kidd as a writer?
A Conversation with Jess Kidd
Q: What interested you about the merrow figure? Why did you decide to have Christabel/Sibéal be a merrow?
A: I first encountered the merrow in Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, published in 1825. I was instantly fascinated and began to investigate further. Legend had it that the merrow women were beautiful and they would often take a land-based human mate, for the merrow men were astonishingly ugly. The merrow’s magic cap, which allowed her to return to her underwater past life, would have to be taken and hidden by her husband if she were to stay with him. The image of a woman transformed from a wild creature of the sea to a domesticated mortal is found in other shape-shifting folklores, such as the sealskin-shedding selkie. This metamorphosis, in most cases, is not plain sailing. The merrow for me became the wilder, angrier cousin of the mermaid, who has undergone much sweetening through all her many incarnations in popular legend.
I wanted to rewrite the Irish merrow myth setting it in Victorian London, a period bridging the popularity of cabinets of curiosities and exotica with the later collecting and taxonomic frenzy that followed on the evolutionary discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. There was a fascinating interplay between the world of science and the world of the circus—experts would be called on to validate spectacular acts, and circus sideshows offered “case studies.” With a Victorian public clamoring for spectacle, a merrow in this time and place would become more than a myth: she would become a curiosity, and therefore a commodity.
Q: The novel is a fantastic blend of genres with many mythological and literary allusions. Were there any books of mythology or novels that particularly influenced Things in Jars?
A: As I researched the book I began to get a feel for the grit and magic of mid-nineteenth-century London. If you were born poor there was little hope your life would ever be other than precarious, ill-nourished and short. And yet, on the back of massive capital, innovation flourished. The first stretch of the London Underground was built in 1863; some said risking a journey at its breakneck speeds (20 mph) could age you by decades, or realign your organs! I wanted to listen in to the street talk and watch the great new rail lines being laid. The books I was influenced by were varied, ranging from Henry Mayhew’s account of working Londoners published during the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London Labour and the London Poor) to Michel Faber’s remarkable The Crimson Petal and the White. Some of the mythological references were suggested by place (Father Thames, Herne the Hunter for the Windsor scenes), but I had fun bringing in other references, such as the raven from Dickens and Poe. I hoped that these literary references could add another layer to the rich Victorian metropolis. Even today there’s sense of strata to the story of London, that after two thousand years it rests on so many lives and tales and that anything could be possible in this glorious, filthy and glittering city.
Q: Bridie is such an original, fierce character. Were you thinking of any historical or literary figures when you wrote her?
A: I was always drawn to female characters who fought and won control over their lives. Oddly, the first character that came to mind was Jane Austen’s Emma, but I loved the feral wildness of Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights traipsing over the moors as child, woman and ghost. Bridie very much presented herself fully formed, from her extraordinarily ugly bonnet to the poisonous darts she (allegedly) keeps in her boot heels. Bridie is very much the product of her past, and the skills she possesses (no one reads a body or a crime scene quite like her) are as a result of her experiences. She’s been a Dublin orphan, a resurrection man’s sidekick, an anatomist’s apprentice, and she finished her training with an experimental toxicologist.
Bridie adopts a male disguise in order to infiltrate places she would be unable to go as a woman, a surgical lecture at St. Bart’s for example. Consider the extraordinary Dr. James Barry, a decorated military surgeon who hailed from Cork, Ireland, who was found on “his” death to have been a woman all these years. At a time when men controlled the public sphere and women were barred from entering the medical profession, it seemed likely that Dr. Barry had presented as a man in order, amongst other complex motivations, to become a surgeon.
Q: What research was involved in your writing process?
A: I read a fair amount of Victorian fiction and nonfiction, especially novels or accounts written around the time my book is set (1863). I also read historical novels to get a sense of what might provide the reader a way into the period when I started to build by own world. Throughout the process I turned to nonfiction works on everyday Victorian life to get the background details right. The worlds of surgery and the circus in particular were wonderful to research. On any given day I could find myself engrossed in accounts of early operations, or looking at old surgical instruments or finding out about the lives of circus performers. I’m London-based, so I was also able to walk the city I was writing about, which was extremely helpful. During the early stage of planning, a local historian and map expert accompanied me so I could learn to see past the modern day. In this way I started to trace an outline of Bridie’s world on my own, using many of the landmarks still here today. I also found inspiration at sites such as the Old Operating Theatre Museum and the Herb Garret (for drying herbs and storing medicines) hidden in the roof space of St. Thomas’ Church, once the original site of St. Thomas’ Hospital. After several visits to this, Europe’s oldest surviving operating theater, I felt equipped to write the surgical scenes. Throughout the process I consulted specialists in various fields of Victorian studies, for example, to make sure Ruby Doyle’s tattoos were historically accurate! Even when the detail was fantastic, it felt important that it should be historically appropriate. Finally, just before the copyediting stage, I worked with a history lecturer and academic to double-check that I was on the right track.
Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned from your research?
A: I learned that the Victorians were not at all staid and straitlaced! Many of them were free-thinking and experimental and curious about the world. But conventions were important, and adopting a veneer of respectability could still allow greater freedom. This was a time when your social class and gender dictated the course of your life, who you met and how you ought to behave. One of the most surprising things I learned was exactly how restricted Bridie as a single woman living alone would have been in terms of freedom of unchaperoned movement. This was a time when men controlled the public spheres and women were encouraged to retreat into a domestic setting. This didn’t bode well for my female investigator, particularly one I had envisaged as being able to go from the Rookery slums to the grandest drawing room. I began to see this obstacle as a challenge for the indomitable Bridie to face. Researching the finer points of Victorian society gave a solution: if Bridie adopted a widow’s dress she would be instantly identifiable as a respectable woman with a little more freedom to roam.
Q: The novel moves back and forth in time and has multiple perspectives. Discuss Mrs. Bibby’s story within a story. Why did you decide to have her tell her history as a story? Did you consider other ways to explore her past?
A: I’m very drawn to stories and storytellers and I think they feature in all my fiction. Mrs. Bibby was one of my favorite characters to write: her experiences and history have shaped her into a ruthless and adaptable criminal. However, I didn’t want to make her just out-and-out bad, but rather show how her journey has created her. By fictionalizing her past she’s able to communicate painful events; it also adds to that layering of lore that happens throughout the book. So, two runaway waifs from an orphanage don’t see dangerous fog, they see gamboling otters. I think the role of storyteller is well fitted to Mrs. Bibby, who gets by on her guile and by weaving fictions to disguise her identity.
Q: Ruby is not your first ghost character. Why did you want to include another one in this novel?
A: I have on ongoing fascination with the relationship between the living and dead, not just the idea of ghosts, but who sees them, and what they can come to represent. In my other books I had multiple ghosts, such as the chorus of dead people in Himself and the saints in Mr. Flood’s Last Resort. However, with this book I wanted the relationship to be more intense and intimate. A living character falling in love with a ghost (or vice versa!) is not a new idea, but it’s a very powerful one. I think a lot can be explored through this, not least the difficulty we have in letting go when we lose someone and we want that person’s story to somehow go on. I also set myself a challenge with writing my one ghost: to make him as physically real as possible. As a boxer, Ruby Doyle defines himself by his physicality and to an extent must come to accept the loss of his body.
Q: Relationships between parents and children are central to the novel. Was there any particular aspect of this relationship you wanted to explore?
A: A brilliant question and one that’s got me thinking that my stories tend to start from a place where the protagonist has experienced a loss of family or parent. I find the repercussions of a parent-child relationship, positive and negative, a source of fascination because making sense of this relationship lies at the heart of my characters.
In Things in Jars the parent-child relationships by birth (Dr. Harbin and Myrtle, or Gideon and Dr. Eames, for instance) are not always strong, sustaining, or built on trust. Things in Jars offers family models founded on friendship or mutual respect rather than being related genetically. Dr. and Mrs. Prudhoe foster children whom society has thrown away, and Bridie, an orphan, finds various mentors and charges throughout her life.
Q: What are you working on next?
A: I have just finished my first book for children, called Everyday Magic, for readers seven years and upward. Novel Four is on its way and I’m very excited about it, another historical novel but set in a time and a place you might not expect from me. I’m also working on original TV projects with some amazing production companies.
Introduction
In the dark underbelly of Victorian London, a formidable female sleuth is pulled into a macabre world of fanatical anatomists and crooked surgeons while investigating the kidnapping of an extraordinary child in this gothic mystery.
Topics & Questions for Discussion
1. Jess Kidd evokes Victorian London through all five senses. What descriptions brought the city alive for you? Were there any parts of Kidd’s London that felt familiar, or some that felt new?
2. Gan Murphy advised Bridie, “When in doubt, take it apart, girl” (page 80). How does Bridie “take things apart” in Things in Jars?
3. The detective is a familiar figure in Victorian-era fiction. Discuss how Kidd subverted your expectations of a traditional detective—or did she?
4. How would you describe Mrs. Bibby? What defines her as a character?
5. In addition to the merrow, there are many references to mythology from various cultures, including character names like Euryale (one of the Greek Gorgons and a sister of Medusa), Father Thames, and Herne the Hunter, and creatures such as the kraken and the raven. How do these uses of mythology influence the tone and spirit of the novel?
6. Bridie has two love interests in the novel: Ruby Doyle, and Valentine Rose of Scotland Yard. What do the two men have in common? How are they different?
7. Were you surprised to learn who attacked Eliza? How does the revelation affect Bridie?
8. Storytelling is woven into Things in Jars in various ways, including through folklore and family histories. What do you think the author is trying to achieve with these layers of storytelling?
9. How do the worlds of magical realism and science complement each other in this novel? Do you think the author blends them together successfully?
10. There are many writers, poets, and works of literature mentioned by Kidd, including Charles Dickens. In what ways do you see a Dickensian influence in Things in Jars? What elements of plot, characterization, and setting remind you of his novels?
11. What aspect of Christabel/Sibéal most intrigued you? Although this character does not speak, what are you able to learn about her personality? What do you think she and Bridie might have in common?
12. How did you react after learning the truth about Ruby Doyle? Discuss your impression of Bridie and Ruby’s relationship from start to finish.
13. Transformation is at the center of Things in Jars: a child transforms into a mermaid; Bridie remakes herself in childhood and dons disguises throughout her investigation; Cora’s life is changed by a new love; characters live, die, and even return as ghosts. In your opinion, which character undergoes the greatest transformation, and why?
Enhance Your Book Club
1. Research mythological sea creatures from other cultures and read a folktale about one of them. Consider in what ways those tales resemble the story of the merrow in Things in Jars, and how they differ.
2. As a group, visit a local natural history museum—you might find some “things in jars.” Are there any displays or specimens from the Victorian era? In what ways do they differ from more modern artifacts?
3. If your reading group has not yet read Jess Kidd’s other novels, Himself and Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, choose one of them and discuss it at your next gathering. What similarities do they share with Things in Jars? Differences? What themes do you think interest Jess Kidd as a writer?
A Conversation with Jess Kidd
Q: What interested you about the merrow figure? Why did you decide to have Christabel/Sibéal be a merrow?
A: I first encountered the merrow in Thomas Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland, published in 1825. I was instantly fascinated and began to investigate further. Legend had it that the merrow women were beautiful and they would often take a land-based human mate, for the merrow men were astonishingly ugly. The merrow’s magic cap, which allowed her to return to her underwater past life, would have to be taken and hidden by her husband if she were to stay with him. The image of a woman transformed from a wild creature of the sea to a domesticated mortal is found in other shape-shifting folklores, such as the sealskin-shedding selkie. This metamorphosis, in most cases, is not plain sailing. The merrow for me became the wilder, angrier cousin of the mermaid, who has undergone much sweetening through all her many incarnations in popular legend.
I wanted to rewrite the Irish merrow myth setting it in Victorian London, a period bridging the popularity of cabinets of curiosities and exotica with the later collecting and taxonomic frenzy that followed on the evolutionary discoveries of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. There was a fascinating interplay between the world of science and the world of the circus—experts would be called on to validate spectacular acts, and circus sideshows offered “case studies.” With a Victorian public clamoring for spectacle, a merrow in this time and place would become more than a myth: she would become a curiosity, and therefore a commodity.
Q: The novel is a fantastic blend of genres with many mythological and literary allusions. Were there any books of mythology or novels that particularly influenced Things in Jars?
A: As I researched the book I began to get a feel for the grit and magic of mid-nineteenth-century London. If you were born poor there was little hope your life would ever be other than precarious, ill-nourished and short. And yet, on the back of massive capital, innovation flourished. The first stretch of the London Underground was built in 1863; some said risking a journey at its breakneck speeds (20 mph) could age you by decades, or realign your organs! I wanted to listen in to the street talk and watch the great new rail lines being laid. The books I was influenced by were varied, ranging from Henry Mayhew’s account of working Londoners published during the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851 (London Labour and the London Poor) to Michel Faber’s remarkable The Crimson Petal and the White. Some of the mythological references were suggested by place (Father Thames, Herne the Hunter for the Windsor scenes), but I had fun bringing in other references, such as the raven from Dickens and Poe. I hoped that these literary references could add another layer to the rich Victorian metropolis. Even today there’s sense of strata to the story of London, that after two thousand years it rests on so many lives and tales and that anything could be possible in this glorious, filthy and glittering city.
Q: Bridie is such an original, fierce character. Were you thinking of any historical or literary figures when you wrote her?
A: I was always drawn to female characters who fought and won control over their lives. Oddly, the first character that came to mind was Jane Austen’s Emma, but I loved the feral wildness of Catherine Earnshaw in Wuthering Heights traipsing over the moors as child, woman and ghost. Bridie very much presented herself fully formed, from her extraordinarily ugly bonnet to the poisonous darts she (allegedly) keeps in her boot heels. Bridie is very much the product of her past, and the skills she possesses (no one reads a body or a crime scene quite like her) are as a result of her experiences. She’s been a Dublin orphan, a resurrection man’s sidekick, an anatomist’s apprentice, and she finished her training with an experimental toxicologist.
Bridie adopts a male disguise in order to infiltrate places she would be unable to go as a woman, a surgical lecture at St. Bart’s for example. Consider the extraordinary Dr. James Barry, a decorated military surgeon who hailed from Cork, Ireland, who was found on “his” death to have been a woman all these years. At a time when men controlled the public sphere and women were barred from entering the medical profession, it seemed likely that Dr. Barry had presented as a man in order, amongst other complex motivations, to become a surgeon.
Q: What research was involved in your writing process?
A: I read a fair amount of Victorian fiction and nonfiction, especially novels or accounts written around the time my book is set (1863). I also read historical novels to get a sense of what might provide the reader a way into the period when I started to build by own world. Throughout the process I turned to nonfiction works on everyday Victorian life to get the background details right. The worlds of surgery and the circus in particular were wonderful to research. On any given day I could find myself engrossed in accounts of early operations, or looking at old surgical instruments or finding out about the lives of circus performers. I’m London-based, so I was also able to walk the city I was writing about, which was extremely helpful. During the early stage of planning, a local historian and map expert accompanied me so I could learn to see past the modern day. In this way I started to trace an outline of Bridie’s world on my own, using many of the landmarks still here today. I also found inspiration at sites such as the Old Operating Theatre Museum and the Herb Garret (for drying herbs and storing medicines) hidden in the roof space of St. Thomas’ Church, once the original site of St. Thomas’ Hospital. After several visits to this, Europe’s oldest surviving operating theater, I felt equipped to write the surgical scenes. Throughout the process I consulted specialists in various fields of Victorian studies, for example, to make sure Ruby Doyle’s tattoos were historically accurate! Even when the detail was fantastic, it felt important that it should be historically appropriate. Finally, just before the copyediting stage, I worked with a history lecturer and academic to double-check that I was on the right track.
Q: What was the most surprising thing you learned from your research?
A: I learned that the Victorians were not at all staid and straitlaced! Many of them were free-thinking and experimental and curious about the world. But conventions were important, and adopting a veneer of respectability could still allow greater freedom. This was a time when your social class and gender dictated the course of your life, who you met and how you ought to behave. One of the most surprising things I learned was exactly how restricted Bridie as a single woman living alone would have been in terms of freedom of unchaperoned movement. This was a time when men controlled the public spheres and women were encouraged to retreat into a domestic setting. This didn’t bode well for my female investigator, particularly one I had envisaged as being able to go from the Rookery slums to the grandest drawing room. I began to see this obstacle as a challenge for the indomitable Bridie to face. Researching the finer points of Victorian society gave a solution: if Bridie adopted a widow’s dress she would be instantly identifiable as a respectable woman with a little more freedom to roam.
Q: The novel moves back and forth in time and has multiple perspectives. Discuss Mrs. Bibby’s story within a story. Why did you decide to have her tell her history as a story? Did you consider other ways to explore her past?
A: I’m very drawn to stories and storytellers and I think they feature in all my fiction. Mrs. Bibby was one of my favorite characters to write: her experiences and history have shaped her into a ruthless and adaptable criminal. However, I didn’t want to make her just out-and-out bad, but rather show how her journey has created her. By fictionalizing her past she’s able to communicate painful events; it also adds to that layering of lore that happens throughout the book. So, two runaway waifs from an orphanage don’t see dangerous fog, they see gamboling otters. I think the role of storyteller is well fitted to Mrs. Bibby, who gets by on her guile and by weaving fictions to disguise her identity.
Q: Ruby is not your first ghost character. Why did you want to include another one in this novel?
A: I have on ongoing fascination with the relationship between the living and dead, not just the idea of ghosts, but who sees them, and what they can come to represent. In my other books I had multiple ghosts, such as the chorus of dead people in Himself and the saints in Mr. Flood’s Last Resort. However, with this book I wanted the relationship to be more intense and intimate. A living character falling in love with a ghost (or vice versa!) is not a new idea, but it’s a very powerful one. I think a lot can be explored through this, not least the difficulty we have in letting go when we lose someone and we want that person’s story to somehow go on. I also set myself a challenge with writing my one ghost: to make him as physically real as possible. As a boxer, Ruby Doyle defines himself by his physicality and to an extent must come to accept the loss of his body.
Q: Relationships between parents and children are central to the novel. Was there any particular aspect of this relationship you wanted to explore?
A: A brilliant question and one that’s got me thinking that my stories tend to start from a place where the protagonist has experienced a loss of family or parent. I find the repercussions of a parent-child relationship, positive and negative, a source of fascination because making sense of this relationship lies at the heart of my characters.
In Things in Jars the parent-child relationships by birth (Dr. Harbin and Myrtle, or Gideon and Dr. Eames, for instance) are not always strong, sustaining, or built on trust. Things in Jars offers family models founded on friendship or mutual respect rather than being related genetically. Dr. and Mrs. Prudhoe foster children whom society has thrown away, and Bridie, an orphan, finds various mentors and charges throughout her life.
Q: What are you working on next?
A: I have just finished my first book for children, called Everyday Magic, for readers seven years and upward. Novel Four is on its way and I’m very excited about it, another historical novel but set in a time and a place you might not expect from me. I’m also working on original TV projects with some amazing production companies.
About The Author
Photograph © Travis McBride
Jess Kidd
Jess Kidd is the award-winning author of Murder at Gulls Nest, The Night Ship, Himself, Mr. Flood’s Last Resort, and Things in Jars. Learn more at JessKidd.com.
Product Details
- Publisher: Atria Books (September 29, 2020)
- Length: 400 pages
- ISBN13: 9781982121297
Raves and Reviews
“Miraculous and thrilling . . . A few pages in and I was determined to read every word Jess Kidd has ever written. “ —DIANE SETTERFIELD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Thirteenth Tale and Once Upon a River
"A perfect mix of hilarity, the macabre, and a touch of romance, THINGS IN JARS is ridiculously entertaining, all as it sneaks up and makes you feel things. Would that more books had such daring. The language is perfection. Simply: Jess Kidd is so good it isn't fair." —ERIKA SWYLER, bestselling author of The Book of Speculation and Light from Other Stars
"Things in Jars is an extraordinary tale full of dark magic, wicked humour, and hugely entertaining characters all of whom are beautifully drawn. An absolute treat!." —RUTH HOGAN, author of The Keeper of Lost Things
"Kidd (Mr. Flood's Last Resort, 2018, etc.) is an expert at setting a supernatural mood perfect for ghosts and merrows, but her human villains make them seem mundane by comparison. With so much detail and so many clever, Dickensian characters, readers might petition Kidd to give Bridie her own series. Creepy, violent, and propulsive; a standout gothic mystery." —KIRKUS REVIEWS (starred)
"Kidd has created a captivating cast of characters and delivers a richly woven tapestry of fantasy, folklore, and history. The atmosphere is thick with myriad unpleasant smells on offer, and readers may find themselves wrinkling their noses, but they will keep turning the pages. Recommend to fans of Ruth Hogan’s The Keeper of Lost Things (2017) and Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent (2017)." —BOOKLIST (starred)
"Kidd has fashioned enjoyable, indelible characters and a plot that keeps readers guessing, smiling and maybe even flinching." —MINNEAPOLIS STAR TRIBUNE
"An enchanting mix of fact and fairytale for those looking for an out of the ordinary mystery." —HUFFINGTON POST
"Jess Kidd’s stories are so magical, she should be a genre all to herself … Things in Jars is exquisite. Perfect storytelling.” —JOANNA CANNON, author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep
"This unusual Victorian detective tale is hugely satisfying and beautifully written . . . Kidd gives the world what is instantly one of fiction's great spectral double acts." —THE TIMES (UK)
“This pacy piece of Victorian crime fiction delivers chills galore … done with panache … Her imagination runs wild, in tightly controlled prose. Her concision makes the book feel like a high-pressure jar.” —THE GUARDIAN
"Thrilling, mysterious, twisted but more than anything, beautifully written and filled to bursting point with heart." —GRAHAM NORTON, New York Times bestselling author of Holding
“The murky grotesqueries of Victorian London. The misfits, miscreants and monsters. The tenderness found in the most unexpected of places. I savoured every page of Things in Jars.” —CLAIRE MCGLASSON, author of The Rapture
”Things in Jars drew me in from the first sentence and held me, transfixed. Utterly beguiling and original, Jess Kidd writes so beautifully that every sentence was a delight. This novel deserves to soar.” —HOLLY CAVE, author of The Memory Chamber
"A twisting, precis-defying plot . . . Arresting, funny and well-written." —SUNDAY TIMES
"A masterclass in storytelling. One of those books that truly does make you laugh out loud, that shakes and remakes what you think a story can be. It's rare to find a book so satisfying." —KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of The Mercies
Resources and Downloads
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- Book Cover Image (jpg): Things in Jars Trade Paperback 9781982121297
- Author Photo (jpg): Jess Kidd Photograph © Travis McBride(0.1 MB)
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