A grim and thrilling read
Novel beginnings are seldom more dramatic or more grim than the first 10 pages of Nicola Morgan's Fleshmarket. This is sweat-on-the-forehead stuff. In the startling introduction to her story, Morgan, an uncompromising writer who doesn't believe in holding back, takes you straight to the painful centre of what is to follow and leaves you gasping. Fleshmarket is not going to be a novel that hides away from pain and suffering. This opening is not for wimps, and neither is the story that follows.
Fleshmarket is a novel about real people caught up in horrible events. It is written in the form of a thriller, but there is no contrived plot or far-fetched situations to create the shivers and suspense that pack every page. Here is a rare piece of fiction that could, or probably did, happen. The situations are real; only some of the characters are imagined.
The story is set in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, in the 1820s, and centres on a young boy's obsession to avenge his mother's death. The dark background to Robbie's story is the gruesome developments being made at this time in primitive surgery at Edinburgh's Infirmary. Here, pioneering surgeon Dr Robert Knox carries out ground-breaking surgical operations on patients who hope that Knox's knife will give them a chance of survival.
Robbie lost his mother following a tragic and hideously painful operation performed without anaesthetic or sterile conditions. The young boy sees Dr Knox as a murderer. Robbie's life sinks into poverty and depression once his mother is no longer there to take care of him, so there is only one way forward for the boy: he has to take revenge on the person responsible for her death.
Robbie is only a boy but he is up against the might of a fiendishly clever and determined man of medicine who knows that the operations he is carrying out will benefit mankind in the long run. But Robbie sees him as the Devil incarnate who must be destroyed at all costs.
Nicola Morgan's vivid story is played out amongst the poverty, disease and corruption of 19th century Edinburgh, but her depiction of Robbie's moral and emotional struggles is never outweighed by all the gruesomeness and grime. Fleshmarket is well and truly a book that thrills, but behind the rip-roaring plot there is a painful truth that none of us should ever forget. This is an important book that lives up to the expectations of its evocative title and dramatic cover. Stories don't come any more powerful than this.
Fleshmarket
By Nicola Morgan
Published by Hodder Children's Books
ISBN 0 340 85557 6
