Fotografía de autor

Peg Kingman

Autor de Not Yet Drown'd

3 Obras 180 Miembros 37 Reseñas 1 Preferidas

Series

Obras de Peg Kingman

Etiquetado

Conocimiento común

Fecha de nacimiento
20th Century
Género
female
Nacionalidad
USA

Miembros

Reseñas

I felt like I was reading a Jane Austen novel--set in the mid-1800's, the characters were of an educated class, involved in the issues of the day (scientific discoveries, the Chartist movement in Scotland, author's who write anonymously), spoke wittily, paid attention to social mores. The story held my attention all the way through, intrigued by how people of a former era adapted to changes wrought by new understandings of how the world was made. Does evolution happen by chance or by design? Are humans the peak of creation or are we just a brief (in geologic terms) experiment? There were a number of subplots, and at first we are unaware of the connection between them: the man hiding out on an island & working unseen in a rock crevice, the quiet single gardener who ponders creation and tries to make sense of his religious doctrine and writings on evolution, the relevance of the detail about the infants supernumerary digits, the wet nurse who keeps her background a secret. The book then shows a focus on Constantia, the wet nurse, and we are privy to her private thoughts. She mourns her dead son, misses her husband whose name and whereabouts she is determined to keep secret, remembers her dead mother and her upbringing by an upperclass Rani in India where she was orphaned, and wishes to know who her father was.
I really enjoyed the intelligence of the young children in the Chambers' household, the respect paid them by their parents as they taught them to be aware of the workings of the world around them, and the thought game played by the whole house of thinking of a different scientific name for humans (Homo sapiens) based on a different characteristic that might distinguish us from animals.
So many topics to juggle! Yet they all come together as the novel progresses.
I do think the detail about the death of Mrs McAdams could have been left out without harming the story as a whole.
My copy was an Advance Reader's Copy, so I assume that the few sections toward the end of the book, where parenthetical explanations encapsulated some events, were going to be rewritten in the final edition. I've never had such an unfinished ARC before, however, but I would hate to think the author just couldn't be bothered to flesh out these few sections, or was aware that doing so would pull the reader's attention from the main action, the story's arc toward a conclusion.
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Denunciada
juniperSun | 2 reseñas más. | Dec 4, 2023 |
In 1845, Constantia MacAdam, just delivered of twins (one of whom died), serves as wet nurse to the large, ever-growing Chambers family, temporarily residing outside Edinburgh while their city home undergoes renovation. Constantia, unable to be with her beloved husband, makes the best of her grief over her lost son and her struggle to make ends meet, but she has lucked out. Not only has she landed among the kindest people in Scotland, who treat her like a family member rather than a servant, she’s never found such intellectual stimulation in her life, and she thrives on it.

Mr. Chambers, a newspaper publisher, takes a keen interest in the natural world and urges his immense brood to do likewise, even (if not especially) the girls. He impresses Constantia, who also loves natural science, because of the breadth of his knowledge and the liberality of his mind. A sensational book has appeared, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, and its unorthodox views receive a warm welcome in the Chambers household. The reader will guess that Vestiges anticipates Darwin’s influential book almost fifteen years later.

While this is happening, the Chambers’ gardener, who has been at this residence all his life, has derived similar revolutionary ideas from observing the randomness of life and death, thriving and deformity, among his beloved plants. And on a Scottish island reasonably near in mileage yet isolated and hard to reach by even the fastest transport, a quarryman seeks to split apart a limestone ledge, in which, he believes, important fossils lie.

To say, therefore, that The Great Unknown is a philosophical novel about the origins of life restates the obvious. The story, at first glance, may seem thin. Constantia longs to rejoin her husband. She also strives to learn who her father was, which the Chambers family, being the soul of tact, infer is a troublesome matter, a secret best left unprobed. Her good character is plain; what more need anyone know?

That doesn’t satisfy Lady Janet, a distant relative of theirs who possesses neither tact nor sensitivity, though she does express much righteous superiority. (When Constantia finally gets the courage to talk back to Lady Janet, it’s delicious.) Lady Janet is the foil for the good-hearted spirit of inquiry that reigns chez Chambers, and a reminder of how different they are from most Britons.

But there’s much more besides the evocation of a country on the brink of a moral upending through scientific discovery, or the excellent, personal portrayal of the conflict between religion and science. We have a thought-provoking daily drama playing out chance and consequences, fortunate or tragic, and people trying to figure out whether these outcomes mean anything or merely display the benign indifference of the universe. (Note the name Constantia in this regard.) Add to that what makes a person human, and how we differ (or don’t) from other species; or is it just our vanity that we do?

In sentences that have a Victorian ring, Kingman has crafted a plot that often turns on Dickensian coincidences, perhaps too fortuitously, at times. But she’s also created a family as a perfect test case for her themes, and not just because of their scientific curiosity. The male species of Chambers are born with a sixth finger on each hand and a sixth toe on each foot. Random chance, indeed, as with the success of surgeries necessary for these digits’ removal.

As for Mr. Chambers, imagine a Mr. Bennet of Pride and Prejudice as a witty, urbane man of science who’s more immediately concerned with his daughters’ grasp of Linnaean nomenclature than how to attract a husband—though, rest assured, they have dancing and music lessons too.

Not everyone will gravitate toward a quiet, reflective story like this, a daguerreotype of the moment when brave thinkers began to ask the most earthshaking questions without fear of divine retribution. But readers who take The Great Unknown for what it is will be greatly rewarded.
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Denunciada
Novelhistorian | 2 reseñas más. | Jan 26, 2023 |
It was a time of social turmoil.

The working man wanted his voice heard in government. The Chartist movement was met with a violent reaction from the powers that be; the leaders were imprisoned or they fled the country.

It was an age of science.

Gentlefolk became amateur naturalists, collecting specimens of life living and dead. Fossil discoveries caused great wonder. Theories were created to explain the fossil records, some contorted to fit the Christian idea of time and history. Scandalous books were published suggesting a natural history that upset the Christian hegemony.

My Victorian Age professor had our class read pivotal books published in 1859, including The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. The professor told us that the ideas behind Darwin's book had been around; Darwin's genius was to put the puzzle pieces together, grounded in sound scientific research. Darwin dragged his feet publishing his theory, knowing the havoc it would bring.

The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman is set in 1846 when people were beginning to think about the questions Darwin finally, publicly, addressed in 1859.

There is a mysterious woman at the heart of the novel who goes by the alias Mrs. McAdams. She left her husband and traveled to the city to give birth to twins, one of whom died a month later. She is enlisted to be a wet nurse to a brilliant family who warmly welcomes her.

Mrs. McAdams struggles with issues of identity. Her mother's early death left clouded her true paternity. And she wonders about the big questions: are we ruled by chance, nature, or God? What does it mean to be human? What separates us from other creatures?

Several books are central in the novel, books that arouse deep thoughts from the characters. One is the 1845 best-selling, iconoclastic Vestiges of the National History of Creation. Another is the 1831 On Naval Timber and Arboriculture, which sounds like a yawner, but its appendix included a discussion of natural selection.

Vestiges became a best-seller. It appears and reappears in the novel, traveling from hand to hand.

They were dangerous things, book; best locked safely away in cages, like fierce beasts in a menagerie. ~from The Great Unknown by Peg Kingman

Mrs. McAdams's backstory is slowly revealed. Her quest to find her natural father takes her on an interesting and surprising journey. She questions many things--why a baby with extra digits is not embraced as an evolutionary improvement; whether things happen by chance or design; if humankind has the power--clearly, it does have the will--to reverse the spinning of the galaxies.

The Great Unknown is an idea-driven story, and I found myself intrigued to read on for the questions posed are timeless.

As a quilter interested in quilt and fiber history, I was interested in Mrs. McAdam's vocation creating 'bizarres', designs for roller-printed cottons that were popular in the 1840s. Her designs were inspired by the minuscule life she discovered under the powerful new microscopes. Science had even invaded fashion! Colors, too. The newly discovered aniline dyes replaced the plant-based dyes, and new colors rose to popularity: mauve and purple, chrome yellow and orange, and greens that did not fade to blue or tan or rely on arsenic.

Our heroine's journey takes her into her past to discover her true family roots before she returns to her husband. All their hopes are realized in a strange and circular way in a satisfying resolution.

In the 19th c, science was embraced as a panacea to society's ills, a way to reverse the natural order. Science disturbed the status quo and challenged Biblical authority, upended humanity's place in the universe and scheme of things.

But as Mrs. McAdams and we know, it appears that chance is what really rules the universe.

I was granted access to a free ebook by the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.
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1 vota
Denunciada
nancyadair | 2 reseñas más. | Dec 6, 2019 |
I struggled with this book and just couldn't get engaged with the story. A summary is captivating enough - a young Scottish widow recieves a mysterious package from her twin brother who died in India, begins to suspect he may not have died after all, and so begins a journey half way across the world. Still, there are a number of subplots, characters, and almost too many details about steamships, Scottish ballads, and tea (and I love tea) to wade through in order to get to the heart of this book. The author had the gem of a good story here, it just wasn't well executed, and I hope to read the author again when she is a more developed writer.… (más)
 
Denunciada
wagner.sarah35 | 7 reseñas más. | Mar 31, 2017 |

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Obras
3
Miembros
180
Popularidad
#119,865
Valoración
½ 3.4
Reseñas
37
ISBNs
13
Idiomas
2
Favorito
1

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