March book club - The Butcher's Hook

Thank you very much for the copy received yesterday,?
Will try start it but hope take on holiday ?

Just received yesterday and looking forward to a nice long reading session.
I would like to ask Janet about the creative writing course she took and how she felt it helped her. I am also interested to know why she chose this particular time period and what research she needed to do to give authenticity.

Hi, Thanks so much for my copy of The Butchers Hook it only arrived last Saturday 19th. I will do my very best to read before end of month but have a family wedding over Easter weekend and my sister having knee replacement surgery today and I am her main carer so I a little pressed for time.

You have clearly had a very colourful career so far, so what inspired you to start writing and why choose this particular time period?

I really enjoyed this vivid description of Georgian life.It really assaulted all the senses and painted an amazing picture with words. Quite unexpectedly took a turn to the darker side in the second half of the book.
Is Janet going to write a sequel? The ending seemed quite open to a follow up of the heroine's adventures.

Having recently read a novel by Celia Imrie, my first thoughts on receiving this novel by Janet Ellis were: ‘Oh no, not another actor attempting to write’. Celia Imrie’s novel, whilst a good example of ‘chick-lit’, and quite enjoyable in a holiday/beach-read type of way, could hardly be classed as quality literature. How wrong I was! This novel by Janet Ellis is amazing – especially as it is a first novel. I was ‘hooked’ from the start, and intrigued by the characters and the relationships. Not so much a ‘coming of age’ novel as a ‘coming of rage’ novel. Anne Jaccob though manages to maintain the sympathy of the reader, in spite of her outrageous actions. She is so vulnerable, and so starved of love and affection – a little bit like the young Jane Eyre, perhaps, at the beginning. All the characters were portrayed in an interesting way, from the rough butcher’s boy Fub to the revolting Mr Onions – interestingly a vegetarian! The female servants and Anne’s mother were given shadowy roles, as one might expect for females in the 18th century. Throughout I loved Ellis’ detailed observations and the dark imagery which permeates the novel. At first I was puzzled by the title (Butcher’s Hook = look in rhyming slang). But this seems to link in with Anne’s desire for attention and love, as well as in the blood and butchery images which run sordidly throughout. And the London setting, of course. The present tense also added to the urgency of the novel.
As for questions for Janet: I would love to know more about her creative writing course at Curtis Brown. And why was she so specific about the year in which it was set – 1763 – when this didn’t really link to any particular historical event? Also, I’m not sure that the division of the novel into 3 parts with the quotations from John Donne was really necessary – I’d love to hear why she did this. By the way, I loved the cover: the words of the title seemed to shimmer and leap off the front cover at me because of the gold/turquoise contrast – and the intriguing illustrations were wonderful – but why a hard back? This makes it more difficult to sneak into my handbag and read at odd moments.
I would definitely read more novels by Janet Ellis and hope that this is the start of a long writing career. What a contrast to ‘Blue Peter’! There are lots of unanswered questions – so perhaps a sequel? Many thanks, Janet. I thought I would struggle to read this before the end of the month, but I couldn't put it down!

The general outline of this story isn't original but Ellis has cleverly taken an old story and, by introducing a number of twists, has created a principal character who is quite unique.

At first we're encouraged to sympathise with Anne. She is caught in a trap like so many women in early 18th century Britain, she doesn't have a great deal of independence and her marriage will be arranged so that it suits the males concerned, her father and whoever he chooses for her to marry. (I say 'many women' as this was not the situation of working class women who would kill to be in such a situation of wealth and privilege. But stories about them would not press any feminist buttons.)

However, we soon get to see, by her descriptions of the people she despises (which is pretty much everyone) – although very well written – that Anne is very much an odious, poor little rich girl.

Ellis suggests that she got this way through a mixture of child abuse (the biggest effect on her of which was her being starved of education) and the high child mortality (the death of her brother years ago using up all the love she could have for her new baby sister). She, totally irrationally to my mind, unless we factor in sheer animal lust, falls madly in love with a butcher's assistant and how this 'love story' pans out is the core of the novel.

She may be intelligent but Anne's superior attitude towards others sometimes gets her close to disaster. She's not really a good student of human nature and as her exploits become more dangerous and become open knowledge to too many she continues to alienate those who could really scupper her activities. By the middle of the novel she is scraping through her assignations by the skin of her teeth – luck and chance being her only saviour.

Strangely, I thought she became more 'likeable' when she starts to deal with those obstacles that she perceives are in her way. Even here she can't be described as a good strategist. Because she doesn't have a master plan she is forced to react to circumstances rather than control events more closely. In the course of this her real character is revealed – in some ways mirroring the life Fanny Hill, whose 'autobiography' is referred to a couple of times. Like Fanny she starts out as an innocent but life changes her very quickly, Fanny by her acceptance of sex, Anne by dealing with nuisances.

Anne eventually gets what she wants – freedom from the restraints of family life – and she seems quite confident in facing the future. But she hasn't changed in many ways. Her act of kindness to the dying Jacobite is retracted once he breathes his last breath. She walks away to face an unknown future – this in itself being another area where Ellis has decided to subvert the normal convention of justice being seen to be done.

This is a very well written novel, with some clever description and, although I had to overcome my early antipathy to Anne, ended up enjoying the read.

A most enjoyable read, and as someone else suggested, the way is open for more about Anne Jaccobs in the future.
I found the descriptions of the city and street life, as well as that of the Jaccobs household very "real" and generally better than a TV drama set in the period( the characters are too clean and well fed!) The written word allows for a much better mental picture.
Anne was a suprise, changing through the course of the story from a suppressed, restricted life,to be driven by her lust for Fub to become totally unscrupulous to achieve her desires. Then her eyes are opened and she finds the object of her attentions isn't what she wants, but now she has discovered what she is capable of and won't hold back till she gets it.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

At the beginning I felt sorry for Anne and the restricted and lonely life she led. All the way through I was convinced that in the end she would have no choice but to marry the boring and odious Mr Onion. It is no wonder that she was infatuated with Fub, the butcher's boy.

However, Anne's character seems to have an unexpected transformation when she is revealed as being a psychopath who would do anything to achieve the thing she wants the most.

The end of the book was interesting and leaves the story open for a sequel.

My question to Janet is: will you write a sequel to this book, or will your next book be another story set in the same time period as The Butcher's Hook?

I shall definitely buy your next book.

The novel is written in the first person narrative, which I find difficult to get into but once I got my head around that, I found I was really enjoying it.

I love the way Janet uses the vocabulary to describe Anne's thoughts and feelings. I know exactly what she means.

Anne Jaccob is a child starved of love by her stern father and a mother who has lost so many pregnancies that she is perpetually bed-ridden. The latest sickly child, a girl, seeming to take all her love.

Anne is sexually abused by her teacher as a child and this seems to put her on a path of destruction. She has no empathy and deals with anything that gets in the way of her lustful relationship with Fub, the butcher's boy, in a very final but imaginative way. This she can do with impunity because of the lack of any technology in the mid 18th century. Eventually she realises she doesn't want Fub either and has only been using him.

I understand why the story has Anne's mother giving her money so she can avoid a future with Onions and it does open it up for a sequel, but I don't think a wise mother would have done that in 1763. I guess that is artistic licence.

An alternative ending would be for Anne to marry Onions and then continue her black arts on him, which would make her a very wealthy woman and virtually untouchable.

However, if Onions has his spies tracking her and he knows exactly what she's doing, why does he still want to marry her? He knows she hates him and surely he can see a bit further than the end of his nose. His fate would be sealed if the wedding went ahead.

A good read.

I think I must be the only one who didn't like the book. I found it hard to get on the side of the heroine and the style of writing was not for me. Sorry!

I finished this over four days, which is quick for me, so compelling did I find it. I liked the first person narrative which gave Anne more voice to her thoughts and emotions and a more natural character. It's a simple plot - girl falls so passionately for man she will do anything to keep him - easily told with the descriptions of slaughter, blood and gore giving it something of a gothic horror. But Ms Ellis has added her own sharp wit and humour to lift the darkness. It may be 18th century but Jane Austen of not much later it is not. After a slow start the pace picks up and the reader has to gallop along to keep up towards the climax as if a deadline was approaching, something I found off-putting. A good read but sorry to say, for me, nothing special.
Questions: Is Anne's story totally fictional or based on a case/legend/rumour you have found from the period? You have given Anne a very strong will and self-determining character. Is this you making a feminist point - not a criticism - or just the way the story turned out?

I have just finished the book, a slow start and I didn't think I was going to enjoy it but I did, up to a point. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so gruesome and actually found it quite shocking, and in some ways hard to believe that a well brought up middle class girl could behave the way she did. These days she would be called a psychopath.
I did like Janet's writing style, very accomplished and for a first novel, very impressive. I would like to ask her how she got the idea for the novel in the first place.....it is such a far cry from Blue Peter

Sorry this book is not for me. I could not get into the characters and felt no sympathy for Anne.

Hi my lovely free copy arrived on about 20th of the month so had very little time to read before comments requested .
I nearly put book down after first few chapters as thought oh no more of the same old, girl forced into unwanted marriage etc blah, blah. But glad I did not as this young lady turned out to be a very complex and intriguing character and as she is still so young lots more to come I hope. Really good first novel, congratulations, Janet.

Many thanks for the book. Have now finished reading it. Found it rather strange, and was a little disappointed at the ending as it was so inconclusive. I can only assume it has left a chance for there to be a sequel. What a nasty piece of work Anne Jaccob is!!! Well researched for the period and the prose was very vivid and illuminating.

Very pleased to have received a copy of this book and it went to the top of my pile straight away, given the short time we had to read it. Despite its gruesome content I very much enjoyed reading it. I found the prose style refreshingly unusual and particularly evocative. There were a couple of occasions where I went back to re-read sections, to check I hadn't missed something; I don't think I had, but just felt the meaning was sometimes hard to pin down. I liked the way in which you only gradually became aware of Anne's intentions. The ending felt perhaps like a bit of an anti climax, after so much action. My question for Janet would be whether she considered other endings and why she chose the one she did. Thank you.

I finished reading this book this afternoon, having found it rather difficult to ' get into'. It was a little dark for my taste - perhaps I read too many Georgette Heyer novels in my youth! I did find the combination of an observation of an adolescent's emotions against a very accurate description of the historical period interesting. Ann did not stir my sympathy. It wasn't until I finished the book that I realised that Janet had highlighted the unintentional consequences Ann's actions had on others ( e.g the daughter of Ann's tutor, and the loss of the butcher's business) and I wondered if this was deliberate.

Have just finished the book and have rather mixed feelings about it. I felt that the setting and characters were very well described and gave me a great sense of what London would have been like at that time.To begin with I had great sympathy for Anne's predicament and was keen to find out how she would fare in trying to avoid her enforced marriage. However I did not feel that the level if her sexual awareness in her relationship with Fub rang true and the gruesome descriptions of the murders made me shrink from reading further (and I am quite a fan of crime fiction). I found the ending a little disappointing - was Janet trying to bring back a little 'humanity' in Anne's final interactions with the Scotsman but then took this away when Anne took the money back? Strangely that act shocked me more than anything else in the book. Overall, I think I would certainly try other books written by Janet as I enjoyed the style and pace, but would not seek out a sequel to this particular one.

I really enjoyed this surprising novel. Who knew that Janet Ellis could write! To me she is like a modern day Dickens. I would like to ask Janet how she did her research. It was as if she herself had lived in the 18th century. I learned a lot, especially about the workings of a butcher. At first I thought that Anne was a young teenager so i was surprised at her willingness to have sex with Fub. However I went back and checked, and realised she was actually nineteen. What a sad and lonely upbringing she had. Her poor mother had a hard life too, she was basically a baby making machine. Janet, you did well, it's a great story.

I really like Janet Ellis (from seeing her on the Wright Stuff, rather than remembering her from Blue Peter - I was a Valerie Singleton/Christopher Trace girl!) but unfortunately I didn't really like this book.
It goes against the grain to criticise, since I've never written a book myself, but I just didn't find it believable. Even though Anne was clearly a screaming psychopath, I can't help but feel that she'd have had so much modesty instilled into her from birth that she would never have looked at the butcher's boy.
Although it was very easy to read, I did not rush home thinking that I couldn't wait to get to it.
Grannyjacq1 if you read Janet's notes at the end, you'll see she deliberately set it in 1763 precisely because nothing else was going on - except that was the year Boswell met Dr Johnson.

Not usually a fan of historical novels but really enjoyed reading this book. Like others I was also disappointed with the ending, not the fate of Anne, Onions or possibly both that I had anticipated. Also wondering if there will be a sequel and if it was difficult for Janet to maintain the style of vocabulary from the past, so very different from today's, throughout the writing of the book?

Thank you for my free copy of this book. I had saved it to take into hospital as I had day surgery on Tuesday and as I was last on the list for my surgery it did help to distract me.
I enjoyed the book and found the descriptions of Georgian London and the characters good. I would have enjoyed seeing Ann get rid of her father or the awful Onions rather than poor Margaret. While the setting and most characters rang true I did feel that Ann's relationship with Fub not entirely realistic as I am sure that she would have been above looking at a Butchers boy and more modest. Also would she not be afraid of getting pregnant given her poor mothers' experiences. As others have mentioned it is a little like Sarah Walters books which I think I found more convincing.
I would be interested to read another book by Janet . Perhaps a sequel to this book could start with a destitute and pregnant Ann. It's a shame the Scotsman is dead because he could have rescued her!

My question to Janet:-
There is a lot of dry humour in the book. Did you plan for this at the start of writing or did it happen as you developed the character of Ann?

Not able to complete read of this in time, I'm afraid - do you want me to return the book?