The Confessions of Frannie Langton - Sara Collins

 

I found this gorgeous Harper Perennial edition of The Confessions of Frannie Langton in a London charity shop and just couldn't resist it - it's a book I've seen many reviews of and have been meaning to pick up for a while. This is Sara Collins' debut novel and I began reading with little knowledge its contents - the story which unfolded before me was gripping, exciting and thought-provoking. The tale begins in London with excerpts from the trial of Frannie Langton, in 1826 at the Old Bailey, where she is accused of a brutal double-murder of her employers. After enticing us with a few mind-boggling snippets which leave you in state of wonder and intrigue, Collins swiftly jumps back in time to Jamaica in 1812 where Frannie grew up on a plantation as the illegitimate daughter of slave and master. 

We are given an insight into Frannie's early life in subservience to her master Langton and mistress Miss-bella, where she secretly learned to read and write before being taken on as Langton's apprentice, assisting him with his unethical scientific experiments in a mysterious workshop on the estate.When Frannie is brought by Langton to England and given as a gift to renowned scientist George Benham and his wife at their London home, she begins working as a servant in the house and becomes particularly involved with Marguerite Benham. What begins as a relationship between mistress and maid becomes an obsessive love-affair which the pair hide from the rest of the household, including George Benham himself.

This is such a cleverly-written and suspenseful novel, with an unreliable narrator (a feature I enjoy!) who lulls you into a false sense of security at times. The brutal murders of the Benhams is kept a mystery until the very end of the book, and you are kept in the dark until then. The first person narration is a key element of the novel that I thought was essential to how it unfolded, and the prose is really confident from Collins - you’d think she’d been writing novels for years.