Ruth is a poor young seamstress in prison accused of murdering her mistress.
Dorothea is wealthy, beautiful and has a fascination for phrenology - the study of the shape and size of the cranium as a supposed indication of character and mental abilities.
Dorothea's charitable work leads her to Oakgate prison where she meets Ruth, who claims she has killed with supernatural powers in her stitching.
Is Ruth lying to Dorothea or is there something much more sinister going on?
This is a dark gothic tale with an unexpected twist that I did not see coming. Fabulous.

Wow where do I start. I had previously read Laura Purcell's work in the silent companions and fell in love with the Gothic style of her writing. I was eager to read this and I am so excited that the same gothic tone was used in this book. The story follows two main characters Dorothea and Ruth. It moves with ease from past to present the story starting in the present with Ruth in prison and Dorothea a charitable chair on the committee. She visits Ruth in several occasions and the story drifts into Ruth's past, the story being then brought back into the present by Dorothea and her monologue. The book has so many twists and turns. I shed a tear at the treatment of Mim, and also the life of Ruth. The ending of the book so brilliantly written and the final reveal was something I never saw coming. I loved this book and cannot wait for more if Laura's work in the future.

This book was a departure from my normal reads but I found it impossible to put down. The stories of 2 women whose lives, on the face of things, are radically different entwine as one is awaiting execution. Set in the mid 1800s, this story of Ruth the seamstress and her prison visitor, Dorothea, is told from both women's perspectives.
It is a dark tale, written in a style that reminded me of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's 'The Shadow of the Wind'. Ruth story is based on a real-life event, researched by the author and this is evident in the finer details, which make this story both realistic and (paradoxically) supernatural. The book is a compulsive read, driving the reader to the end in order to discover whether Ruth's version of events could possibly be true. There is a twist towards the end which I did not see coming, although the foundations had been carefully laid within the plot. The final twist is a little more predictable, though nonetheless satisfying in its conclusion.

I was attracted to this book by the Victorian setting, although the gothic and vaguely supernatural elements are outside of my usual comfort zone. However, I was rewarded for taking a chance on this - it is a creepy, disturbing and compelling story.

The story is told from two perspectives. Firstly, there is rich but unconventional Dorothea Truelove. She deliberately casts off society's expectations for her, choosing to spend her time engaged with the running of Oakgate Prison and visiting its inmates. It is here that she meets Ruth Butterham, a poor seamstress who is on trial for murdering her employer. As Dorothea listens to Ruth's story, she gets caught up in a tragic story that impacts on her own life.

The two narratives fit together so cleverly that I found it hard to put this novel down - I just wanted to see how it all fitted together and what would happen to the women in the end. I can't pretend that it's a cheerful story - the historical research has been well done by Purcell and it's horrific to think about the kind of lives some of these young women must have endured. However, Purcell keeps the narrative moving quickly, presents us with a range of engaging characters (plus some horrible ones!) and adds in some really creepy elements.

I'd recommend this to anyone who loves historical fiction, even if you are unsure about the slightly supernatural slant - it's cleverly written and never feels unbelievable (which was my concern before I started reading). It's beautifully written, tense and shocking in places, but will certainly keep you reading long into the night.

I absolutely loved this book from the very first page. It follows the dual story line of wealthy Dorothea who could want for absolutely nothing and Ruth who would want for even the smallest act of kindness or compassion. Ruth's mother was born into a life with the trappings of wealth but turned her back on them for the man she loved and subsequent ill health. Ruth is sold into an apprenticeship with a family company of dressmakers but things go from bad to worse as people begin to die. Ruth is eventually charged with murder and this is where the story of Ruth and Dorothea cross paths. Dorothea believes the shape of peoples heads determine their actions and as the plot builds both girls question their beliefs in the world. This is an amazing book and I thoroughly enjoyed it from the beginning to the very last page. I would highly recommend reading this book and learning about Victorian London.

Many thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advanced copy of the book in return for an honest review.

I've just finished The Corset by Laura Purcell and oh my goodness what an insight in to what must have been an appalling time to live if you were without wealth of any standard. Poor Ruth is from a background where money is tight and ends up working for the horrible Mrs Metyard. Things happen, which you'll need to read about and she ends up in prison. Dorothea on the other hand is from a very privileged background and is a bit of a goody two shoes. She thinks she can help people through her studies of the skull.........mmmmm!!!

It was a good read with plenty plot twists. Realy worth a read.

Ruth Butterham knows what betrayal is. Dorothea Truelove is about to find out. Fate brings together Ruth: poor, charged with murder and convinced of her own otherwordly powers- and Dorothea: wealthy, well meaning but misguided. In ‘The Corset,’ the supernatural collides with social injustice.

The plotting is first rate, the dual narrative is executed brilliantly and increasing feelings of claustrophobia and suspense are ratcheted up to a delightfully chilling resolution.

‘The Corset’ cements Laura Purcell as a leading proponent of contemporary Gothic fiction. Enjoying this so much prompted me to purchase her gripping debut (‘The Silent Companions’) and it’s safe to say that this hugely talented writer is going from strength to strength.

Having enjoyed Laura Purcell’s novel The Silent Companions – a creepily Gothic tale of ghostly presences and paranoia in a remote country house – I was attracted to her follow-up. Once again set in the Victorian period, this has a similar atmosphere to her debut: again Purcell teases us with possible supernatural events, but I felt The Corset didn’t have quite the same eerie originality as The Silent Companions. It focuses on the relationship between two young women: Dorothea Truelove, a wealthy heiress of twenty-five who spends her time doing good works rather than snaring a husband; and Ruth Butterham, a teenage murderess awaiting trial in the prison which is one of Dorothea’s pet projects. Two very different worlds collide as Ruth confesses her history to Dorothea: not just the women’s drastically different upbringings, but also the worlds of science and superstition, logic and fantasy, reason and the unexplained.


Ruth has been bitter since childhood. Her mother was once wealthy, but married for love and has now had ample chance to repent at leisure, while her feckless father has a career of diminishing returns as a portrait painter. Ambitious for Ruth’s future, her mother sends her to a good school, but this only places Ruth among snobbish young girls who make fun of her poverty and torment her – on one memorable occasion, kicking her down in the street with such violence that they break her corset. Hatred and shame worm their way deep into Ruth’s soul. The only thing she’s good at is sewing, for which she’s inherited a rare talent from her mother. When her mother gives her the chance to leave school and work alongside her, Ruth leaps at the chance; but she soon comes to believe that a strange power is seeping from her fingers into her needlework. Whatever she feels or thinks when she stitches something seems to be transferred to the item of clothing and, in due course, to the person who wears it. This gives Ruth terrible power – but power in the hands of one untrained and immature can be an awful thing.

In due course Ruth finds herself working as a seamstress for the fashionable dressmaker Mrs Meteyard and her daughter Kate. This should have been a step up the ladder, but the reality of an apprenticeship is shocking. Abused both physically and emotionally, Ruth struggles to find a place among the other girls working in the shop. Fear, suspicion and distrust of one another creates a punishing environment and, when Ruth loses her only friend, she’s pushed to new and extreme measures. Inspired by the memory of a corset she made for herself as a girl, Ruth conceives a plan to get her revenge upon the world.

In comparison, Dorothea comes across as fairly colourless. She isn’t some simpering miss, because we’re shown that she has a deep interest in phrenology (judging character by the shape of the skull) and she has a powerful social conscience. But, try as she might, it doesn’t look as if she’ll be able to shape her own future. Although she has her heart set on marrying a young policeman, inspired by the justice and nobility of his work, Dorothea must wage a constant battle again her father’s efforts to marry her off to someone with money – or at least a title. Her visits to the poor and criminal give her a bit of vicarious excitement in her life – and her interest in Ruth has a sensationalist tinge that rather undermines her superior intentions. As she listens to more and more of Ruth’s story, she begins to question some elements of her own life.

In principle, it’s a fine story. The intertwining voices of the two protagonists are both well created and, crucially, distinctive. But my problem is that I feel I’ve heard it all before. The idea of having a well-meaning young person visiting a criminal woman in prison, and being caught up in some mysterious story of death and the uncanny, is far from unfamiliar. Obviously Affinity comes to mind, although there’s nothing erotic about the relationship between Dorothea and Ruth; I also felt that there were parallels with Anna Mazzola’s The Unseeing. And I suppose I didn’t feel that anything in The Corset really lifted it above these other examples of the ‘Victorian women’s prison visit’ genre. Affinity retains its place at the head of the pack. I thought The Silent Companions was much more original in its subtle layering of tension and its choice of focus.

Purcell is a gifted writer and has an acute sensitivity towards the speech patterns and the ‘feel’ of Victorian life, with its privileged and impoverished living cheek-by-jowl. She was especially good at conjuring up the miserable hard work of the seamstress’s trade and she’s obviously done a lot of research into the pseudo-science of phrenology that so fascinates Dorothea (although she’s a tad prone to melodrama in the matter of Captain Meteyard). It’s just that this particular period of historical fiction is becoming rather crowded now, and I’ll be interested to see how Purcell strikes out in her next book to distinguish herself from the other authors writing about Victorian England.

For the review, see:
https://theidlewoman.net/2018/08/09/the-corset-laura-purcell/

Loved the book, written with such imagination and such a feel for the times. To say that it is an enjoyable read is to do it something of a disservice, it's so much more than that. From the first word to the last, I was hanging on the every word wondering what would come next - for me, the very definition of an immensely enjoyable, well written and well thought-out book.

A perfect read for the Summer Sun and a much spookier read if you wait until the dark of Winter to read it. Enjoy it now, I most certainly did.

Purcell has already proven herself victorious when it comes down to the gothic genre with her debut novel, The Silent Companions. Her follow-up, a creepy Victorian thriller, is just as enthralling.

As with her debut, Purcell employs interweaving narratives to tell her chilling story. The Corset depicts the juxtaposing lives of two young women who sit at opposite ends of the social spectrum. Dorothea Truelove is a well-off, beautiful lady, who refutes all her father’s attempts at having her married and is in love with a man lower than her social station. She’s a charitable lady and upon visiting prisoners of Oakgate prison, her fascination with phrenology and with observing the characteristics displayed by criminals only elevates when she meets teenage seamstress Ruth Butterham.

Ruth is poor, has zero prospects and is awaiting trial for the murder of her employer. From just the age of 12, Ruth has a notable talent for sewing. However, each person she has ever stitched for dies in a horrific manner. It’s inevitable for her to wonder that maybe, in some inexplicable way, it is her fault. She spends her final days in prison determined that she has the supernatural power to bring death by sewing hatred and ill will into the garments she works on. Purcell triumphs in making the reader question, has Ruth Butterham gone mad or is there really some supernatural evil at play? Is she really a victim in all of this?

After leaving home, Ruth embarks on a life of drudgery as she toils for the malevolent Metyards, resides with merciless twins, befriends a black girl called Mim, meets the charming Billy and comes upon the contemptible Captain. The unsettling scenes that occur from the Metyard house are hard to forget.

As in the first book, The Corset’s writing is vibrant and drips with Gothic imagery. As Dorothea learns more about Ruth’s dreadful past, we join her in wanting to know whether Ruth is telling the truth or is merely delusional. Purcell also successfully illustrates the subordinate position of women in the Victorian period when telling this heart-breaking, gripping tale. As the story unravels, as does a twisted revenge plot, interlacing between both narratives leading us to a startling climax. I couldn’t put this book down; Laura Purcell is definitely an instant buy for me from now on! An enchantingly chilling read.

Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

An atmospheric, chiller thriller of epic Gothic proportions!

The story centres around two ladies. One genteel lady Dorothea Truelove who spends her inheritance and time visiting prison's to talk to women criminals. Dorothea has an interest in skulls (phrenology) and wonders if the shape of a person's head can make someone a criminal by or if they are a victim of circumstance.

On one prison visit Dorothea meets 16 year old Ruth Butterham who has been accused of murdering her mistress and that is where this delicious story unfurls one chilling thread at a time.

The story immerses you in a dark world where Ruth fights for survival in a workhouse as a seamstress pouring her love and energy into her creations, when she realises it isn't just her good emotions that have gone into her work, but her true, deepest, darkest feelings. People start dying and falling ill under mysterious circumstances and Ruth begins to think that perhaps it all started with a needle and thread....

A dark, chilling mystery, woven with friendships in adversity, the power and dignity to survive no matter what the odds. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED - especially if you loved Laura's first novel Silent Companions.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/39098246-the-corset

Having previously enjoyed The Silent Companions I was very happy to receive an e-arc of The Corset for review. Set in Victorian times the Corset tells the stories of Dorothea and Ruth.

Dorothea is the 25 year old daughter of an upper middle class gentleman whose wife died some years previous. Dorothea's father is anxious to marry her off, however, Dorothea is a feisty and independent young woman with a mind of her own, and pushes against the social confines of polite Victorian society. Before her death, Dorothea's mother converted to Catholicism and instilled in Dorothea a penchant for charitable good deeds. Dorothea, with a keen interest in phrenology and how the shape of people's skulls are in direct correlation to their personalities and actions, goes to the local women's prison for further research. There she encounters Ruth.

Ruth is a sixteen year old girl incarcerated for the murder of her mistress. Ruth's story is heartbreaking. The daughter of a seamstress and an alcoholic father, she learns to sew from her mother. Tragedy ensues and an angry and grief-stricken Ruth believes that she conveys all her feelings into her stitches which are then encountered by the ultimate wearer of the garment. She is apprenticed to the Metyards, a mother and daughter. Ruth is worked night and day and herself and the other girls are subjected to appalling acts of cruelty at the hands of the Metyards and the Captain, until one day they go too far...

As she tells Dorothea her life story from her cell, Ruth, feisty and spirited, recalls all that happened up to her incarceration. She firmly believes she can stitch her feelings, including hatred and bitterness, sadness and grief, into the commissioned garments and that, as a result, she is responsible for many deaths. Is it a supernatural possibility or does Ruth teeter on the edge of madness?
I thought this book was fantastic and even better than The Silent Companions. The different voices of Dorothea and Ruth, both of who are extremely likeable characters, are very different yet each voice resonates in their own story. The juxtaposition of life in the upper classes versus life at the very bottom is so well described so as to make you imagine you are actually there. A fantastic Dickensian style tale about poverty, child labour, abuse of power, betrayal, murder and revenge, all with a supernatural twist. A riveting unputdownable read.

Thanks to Netgalley, the publisher and Ms Purcell for the opportunity.

Unputdownable- when I woke up at 1am this morning I started reading from 30% of the way through the book and carried on till the end...at 04:30!
I loved Laura Purcell's previous novel, The Silent Companions, and The Corset shares many of the same hallmarks: an unreliable first-person narrator, a crime that may have been carried out by mundane or supernatural means. The Corset is a gaslit melodrama, stocked with dissolute artists, kindly orphans-made-good, toiling seamstresses, snipng society gossips, and overbearing aristocrats. Nevertheless Purcell tackles the grimy reality of life in Victorian England head-on. from socio-economics (inescapable debt, exploitative apprentice 'contracts' and the gruellingly low wages of 'women's work') to feminism (read: the utter lack of) to the vast array of common household poisons! I believe readers will benefit from going in with only a little prior knowledge of the plot, but if my readers enjoyed Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace (pseudo-science, prison setting, unreliable narration) and Sarah Waters' Fingersmith (employers with strange and dangerous habits....) then I would not hesitate to recommend The Corset.

WOW - brilliant, loved every word of this ravishing historical thriller.

I do wish I hadn't read this book!! Only because I'm pretty darned certain it's going to such a hard act to follow that I'm going to find each and every new book I pick up for months, lacking in comparison and I'm saddened and green with envy that everyone who is yet to read this, still has it's delights to look forward to.

The description had me chomping at the bit, the cover had me swooning and I KNEW without doubt that it was my kind of book to a T. Yet still I didn't know what absolute reading PERFECTION this completely spectacular book was going to be.

Reminding me very much of two of my all time favourite reads Affinity and The Observations I am almost lost for words, to describe my feelings adequately after reading this.

It is a historical twisty mystery which is deviously dark and devilishly delectable. Featuring two very different young women. Dorothea Truelove is a well off young lady who wishes to do good works, has an interest in reading the shape of the head, phrenology and in particular observing the characteristics displayed by criminals. She resists her fathers attempts to marry her off, wishing to choose her own suitor, though this is not an option of the well to do Victorian female.

Her choice of good works is to be a prison visitor in Oakgate womens prison, where she soon becomes intrigued and involved with the young murderess Ruth Butterham who is charged with murdering her employer. A talented seamstress, with self taught skills she hones creating herself a corset from scraps of left over fabric, Ruth falls on very hard times as a series of dreadful personal disasters leads her to believe she can cause death by sewing hatred and ill will into the garments she works on.

With her talent with a needle being the only way she can earn a living she ends up apprenticed to the vile and Dickensian sweat shop of the Metyard familys dressmaking business.

What follows is a life of drudgery which is revealed stitch by intricate stitch, as she slaves for the Metyards, crosses paths with the vile Captain, makes a friend in Mim and encounters the handsome Billy. The lives of these two women entwine as each struggles against the whims of others and the restrictions placed on women in this era.

Their are dastardly deeds aplenty, the writing is sheer poetry it has an eerie and compelling literary quality and the characters are sublime. It is worthy of comparison with the wonderful Sarah Waters writing and is a sensational follow up to the authors successful debut novel The Silent Companions and in my opinion is far superior to it.

Put this on your must read list. It will be published in September and you can pre-order it now so you have something to look forward to when the nights begin to draw in.

I received my advance copy of #TheCorset from #NetGalley
My thanks to Raven Books, home of deliciously dark books

I absolutely loved The Silent Companions, so i've been desperate to get my hands on this for a while. Gladly, it really didn't disappoint.

With The Corset, Purcell has written another dark, Gothic story, with realistically chilling undertones. The two main female characters are gripping and believable, and their two distinctive PoV voices work so well along side each other.

As the story unfolds and the plot begins to unravel, Purcell expertly builds to a quite shocking and surprising ending, that i can honestly say i didn't see coming. A brilliant book.

The Corset is a gothic historical novel that unfolds a strange narrative of a girl who seems to be able to kill with a needle and thread, and the woman who visits her in prison and hears her story. Dorothea is a young, fairly well-off Victorian woman whose now-dead mother instilled a belief in charitable work in her. During her visits to Oakgate Prison she meets Ruth Butterham, a sixteen-year-old girl accused of murder. Dorothea wants to test her theory about the shape of a person's skull determining their life and morality, and Ruth seems perfect. Instead, Ruth starts telling her story and Dorothea finds her belief stretched and a chilling connection with her own life.

Purcell's The Silent Companions was a creepy tale of a young widow, but The Corset goes even further to create a classic gothic story that highlights injustice and being a victim through the use of menace and possible unexplainable phenomena. Moving between the perspectives of Dorothea as she visits Ruth and considers marriage to escape her father, and Ruth's story of the strange power of her sewing allows for Purcell to highlight the similarities and differences between the two women. Madness, revenge, and different kinds of imprisonment run throughout the narrative and it also plays with perspective, leading to a satisfying ending again in a classic gothic style.

The Corset feels like a natural successor to late eighteenth and early nineteenth gothic novels in its combination of a strange unfolding narrative of death and revenge and its use of this narrative to expose oppression, imprisonment, and kinds of oppression. It is likely to be another popular gothic read from Purcell, with hints of Sarah Waters' Affinity in subject matter and a main character whose name makes it impossible not to think of Middlemarch.