Set in the earliest days of the 1900s, this exquisitely immersive novella by Cara Viola invites you to stride into the archives of Glasgow’s glorious Kelvingrove museum when it has been built but is yet to be filled with treasures.
Our guide is 19-year-old Madeleine, a young woodworker with a talent for recreating priceless artefacts, who arrives rain-drenched on pages soaked in Carla Viola’s lyrical writing.
We soon learn three things about Madeleine: she is from Great Yarmouth, the only thing she will miss is ‘her’ marsh, and she keeps secrets, a fact told sideways as she meets Mrs Deepdene, the wife of Madeleine’s employer (and a formidable character in her own right). Madeleine “tried to see the other woman’s face, to gauge whether she, too, would be someone who kept secrets.”
The Kelvingrove museum feels equally ripe for secrets, breathed into life by the author’s vivid writing: “From the shadows of the Gothic tradition, the structure rose into the sky, where, at a tremendous height, solid walls divided into many-armed turrets (…) The door had not been locked since the last workman left, yet nobody wanted to venture inside. Kelvingrove was a building lying in wait.”
