Jess Kidd has a fairly varied output from the speculative gothic mystery Things in Jars to her exploration of the historic, ill-fated Batavia voyage to Australia in The Night Ship to, more recently, her cosy 1950s-set murder mystery series featuring ex-nun Nora Breen. With Little Spark, Kidd successfully returns to her more gothic mode with a dark, steampunk fantasy set in Victorian England.
Little Spark opens in 1881 with Bodkin Bell, a young woman who seems to have an extraordinary ability involving static electricity. Being Victorian times, she and her travelling partner (and protector) Cornelius monetise this ability by using it as a parlour trick. It is through this that Bodkin has earned the nickname ‘Little Spark’. Eventually, though, an accident with this ability lands Bodkin in jail. While there she is noticed by a wealthy visitor to the prison – Lady Heperia Halsey – who offers to take Bodkin onto her staff for the remainder of her sentence. Lady Hesperia lives in a remote, walled estate called Point Motte, in a marshy area on Kent where the family is famous for the creation of lifelike automata.
The plot revolves around two murders twenty years apart and the secrets that surround Bodkin. So there are mysteries in Little Spark that some readers may well guess the answers to in advance. But the joy here is more in the gothic milieu that Kidd has created. The prison, the crumbling estate of Point Motte and the surrounding marshland, a long list of strange characters – including the Halsey family, the remaining servants at Point Motte and the local townsfolk. And then there are the automata themselves – fantastical clockwork creations that seem to mimic life.
There was a great fascination with automata in Victorian times, a fascination that easily segues into a steampunk aesthetic. Other authors who have played with this idea include Natasha Pulley, in The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and its sequels, and of course Brian Selznick’s The Invention of Hugo Cabret. But Kidd takes a much darker look at this idea than these two authors. And the final act, in particular, contains some fairly disturbing revelations and characters.
While Little Spark is not a sequel to Things in Jars it certainly shares its approach to dark tales set in Victorian England. It is a register that Kidd excels in as once again she delivers a darkly compelling narrative with an appealing protagonist at its centre.
Little Spark by Jess Kidd
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