The Warlow Experiment - by Alix Nathan (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b><b>Named one of the best books of 2019 by the<i> Daily Mail</i>, <i>The Sunday Times </i>(London), and the BBC <p/>An utterly transporting and original historical novel about an eighteenth-century experiment in personal isolation that yields unexpected--and deeply, shatteringly human--results.</b> <p/><b>The best kind of historical fiction. Alix Nathan is an original, with a virtuoso touch. </b><br><b>--Hilary Mantel</b></b> <p/> Herbert Powyss lives in an estate in the Welsh Marches, with enough time and income to pursue a gentleman's fashionable investigations and experiments in botany. But he longs to make his mark in the field of science--something consequential enough to present to the Royal Society in London. He hits on a radical experiment in isolation: For seven years a subject will inhabit three rooms in the basement of the manor house, fitted out with rugs, books, paintings, and even a chamber organ. Meals will arrive thrice daily via a dumbwaiter. The solitude will be totally unrelieved by any social contact whatsoever; the subject will keep a diary of his daily thoughts and actions. The pay: fifty pounds per annum, for life. <br> Only one man is desperate to apply for the job: John Warlow, a semi-literate laborer with a wife and six children to provide for. The experiment, a classic Enlightenment exercise gone more than a little mad, will have unforeseen consequences for all included.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br>"In a novel premised on stagnation, the incremental but inevitable deterioration of both major characters becomes an unexpectedly gripping drama, fueled by the attraction of repulsion. . .[A] unique and chilling novel."<br><b><i>--The New York Times Book Review <p/></i></b>Social dominance, and the violent means used to maintain it, unites the various storylines in <i>The Warlow Experiment</i>. . .Ms. Nathan stages a series of moral awakenings and comeuppances that overturn the expected order of things. . .Warlow's plight itself is indelible, both pungent and horrifying in its details and profound as a metaphor--a symbol of upper-class barbarity stashed away in the cellar like a telltale heart beating beneath the floorboards.<br><b><i>--The Wall Street Journal <br></i></b><br>"This unusual historical novel will reward readers with the ripe inquiry it makes of a peculiar subject."<b><br><b><i>--The Washington Post</i></b><br></b><br>Sardonic comedy takes on deeper resonances in a tale, rich in period detail, of a ruinously backfiring experiment.<br><b><i>--The Sunday Times</i>, London<br></b><br>[Nathan has a] delicacy of touch. . .Shocking and convincing. . .The complications that ensue, rooted in the initial wrongness of the experiment, take us into the deep heart of blunted male emotion. . .[An] impressive novel. <br><b><i>--The Times Literary Supplement <br></i></b><br>Original and beautifully written, this is a meaty and gripping novel of obsession gone sour. <br><b><i>--Daily Mail</i>, London </b> <p/>"I read Alix Nathan's beautifully constructed new novel about an experiment most strange at great speed: its sentences, imagery and import call you onward and ever deeper. More than once since I finished I've looked down and wondered what might be going on just a few feet below or above me. <i>The Warlow Experiment</i> gets into your head."<br><b><b><b>--</b></b>Laird Hunt, author of<i> The Kind One</i> and<i> In the House in the Dark of the Woods<br></i></b><br> "Unusual, gripping and emotionally complex--I loved this book."<b><i><br></i><b><b>--</b></b>Sally Magnusson, author of <i>The Sealwoman's Gift<i><br></i><br></i></b>"This is an extraordinary, quite brilliant book."<br><b><b><b>--</b></b>C. J. Sansom, author of </b><i><b>Tombland </b><br></i><br>A powerful and unsettling novel, both fascinating and infinitely strange."<i><br></i><b><b><b>--</b></b>Andrew Taylor, <i> </i>author of<i> The King's Evil </i></b><i><br></i><br>"An allegory of prison culture at its cruelest. . .[<i>The Warlow Experiment</i>] is a powerful rebuke to the notion that withholding compassion can somehow be corrective. Nathan's main strength is her keen characterizations of all involved. . .A sturdy historical novel about the perils of pseudoscience." <br><b><i><b><b>--</b></b>Kirkus Reviews <p/></i></b><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>ALIX NATHAN read English and music at York University. She lives in the Welsh Marches, where she owns some ancient woodlands with her husband. She is the author of <i>His Last Fire</i> (2014), a story collection, and <i>The Flight of Sarah Battle</i> (2015), a novel.
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