Helen becomes convinced that she’s being followed, turning her mind back to memories she has so carefully barricaded. This is Melmoth, known by a multitude of names throughout the world, condemned to witness the sins of humanity as a punishment for denying the resurrection of Jesus, seen with her own eyes. Helen becomes entranced by both Josef’s story and Karel’s research with its many references to a woman swathed in black, reaching out a hand to those at their lowest ebb, desperate for a companion in her loneliness. Not long after he’s passed the first pages to Helen, eager to be rid of them, Karel disappears. He’s been left a manuscript by an old man he’d befriended at the city library, a confessional memoir which lays bare the young Josef’s transgressions. Not long before Christmas, she’s summoned by Karel, the partner of her friend Thea. She passes unnoticed, has few friends and dislikes her ancient landlady who scents a penitent. Fans who are as wary of hype as I am can relax: Perry has outdone herself with this chilling slice of Gothic which, as with her previous novels, combines a rattling good yarn with a complex moral dimension.įorty-two-year-old Helen Franklin has scratched a living in Prague for twenty years. Her publishers have been trailing it for months, ramping up an anticipation that was already well primed for many of us who enjoyed both her debut, After the Flood, and her much-lauded second novel, The Essex Serpent. If you’re a frequenter of my neck of the Twitter woods, I’d be surprised if you’d not come across Sarah Perry’s third novel well before it was published.

Melmoth the witness