Working alongside her embittered sister Rose in the dreariness of Mrs Salter’s Doll Emporium, Iris dreams of being an artist. The Doll Factory is the story of Iris, a young woman living a life of respectable but uninspired drudgery. And despite those insightful and interesting discussions (and occasional rants), I STILL have feeling about this book. Over the course of October, we have taken our time to read and discuss a section of The Doll Factory each week. What eventually led me to get over my nerves and actually pick the book up was a buddy read with some of the wonderful ladies who make up the blogging gang of The Write Reads. Plus, it featured a mischievous wombat – one of my very favourite animals and a creature very ill-appreciated in my native UK. As a fan of historical fiction, this was one of my most anticipated books of 2019 and it ticked all my boxes – Victorian setting, female-focused, hints of the Gothic, blending of real-life figures and imagined persons.

I’ve had The Doll Factory on my TBR since it was released last year and, truth be told, I’ve been a little nervous about reading it.

Suddenly her world begins to expand, to become a place of art and love.īut Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting, and his obsession is darkening…

When Iris is asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, she agrees on the condition that he will also teach her to paint. For Iris, an aspiring artist, it is the encounter of a moment – forgotten seconds later, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange and beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning. The Great Exhibition is being erected in Hyde Park and among the crowd watching the spectacle two people meet.

Elizabeth macneal the doll factory