The Visitors by Rebecca Mascull


This is my second post this week about Rebecca Mascull as I featured an interview on Monday Read the interview here. I hope to see a lot more from this author in future as I firmly believe she is one to watch. The Visitors is a wonderful and unique historical novel as it transports the reader not only to a different time and place but to an entirely new sensory experience, this is because the heroine is a deaf-blind girl born in the late Victorian era. Adeliza grows up on her father's hop farm and although she is born with some sight and hearing by the time she is three she is blind deaf and mute. She is locked inside her own head, feeling her way in the world, her only defender is her dear father, her mother has taken to her bed heartbroken after many miscarriages and the tragedy of Adeliza's disability. The servants find her hard work and are often rough. Adeliza is driven by basic needs hunger, thirst, tiredness. But she is not alone in her head she has the visitors; spirits who talk to her, trapped by their frustrations and unfinished business. When Adeliza is six she finds Lottie who teaches her to finger spell, finally allowing Liza to discover language and to interact with the world. From this moment on Liza learns everything she can like a sponge and so begin her adventures in love, war, learning, friendship and the truth about the visitors. I don't want to give away the whole story, this is not a long book but it is an utterly absorbing one and Rebecca's writing style is poetic and enchanting. If you enjoy top notch historical fiction like Lori Baker's The Glass Ocean and Elizabeth Gifford's Secrets of the Sea House then you will love this book.

Thanks to Francine Toon of Hodder who sent me a copy of this book. The Visitors is available in paperback from July 17th 


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