The Butcher's Hook
a dark and twisted tale of Georgian London
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The Butcher's Hook
Narrated by:
Janet Ellis
Buy Now for $26.99
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Narrated by:
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Janet Ellis
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By:
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Janet Ellis
About this listen
'KNOWS HOW TO KEEP HER AUDIENCE HOOKED' The Times
'A MASTERFUL STORYTELLER' Clare Mackintosh
'DARK, WEIRD AND GLORIOUSLY FEMINIST' Elle
Georgian London, in the summer of 1763.
At nineteen, Anne Jaccob, the elder daughter of well-to-do parents, meets Fub the butcher's apprentice and is awakened to the possibilities of joy and passion.
Anne lives a sheltered life: her home is a miserable place and her parents have already chosen a more suitable husband for her than Fub.
But Anne is an unusual young woman and is determined to pursue her own happiness in her own way...
...even if that means getting a little blood on her hands.
'A SHARP EYE AND A SHARPER WIT' Guardian
'A SPIRITED, DARK DEBUT' Woman & Home
'STRANGE, DARK AND UTTERLY MESMERIC' Hannah Kent
*And Janet Ellis's second, darkly compelling novel, How It Was, is out now*©2016 Janet Ellis
Critic Reviews
Janet Ellis's appealing debut novel is like a cross between Fanny Burney's Evelina and US crime drama Dexter... Ellis excels at the poetics of flesh. She writes with a keen eye for the texture of skin and the meat beneath. She vividly describes the slaughter of a calf, the wet thwack of the knife, the cleaving of muscle from bone, the hot rush of blood. Anne, we come to realise, is something of a sociopath. This is where The Butcher's Hook gets really interesting ... There's a wit and a richness to the writing, a nice way with pastiche, and a real feel for the macabre. And, in Anne, she has created an engaging and at times daringly amoral heroine.
Ellis has a public personality of great charm, and a good deal of this gets into her writing... she revels in the historical details, has a grasp of pace and knows how to keep her audience hooked
The Butcher's Hook doesn't read like a first novel - it is a high-finish performance. Its heroine is an 18th-century teenage girl, who starts demurely although her sex drive turns out to be anything but demure. You need to be braced for violence to rival any Jacobean tragedy: The Butcher's Hook will hook you.
This author remains one to watch. She has a sharp eye and a sharper wit. More importantly still, she possesses a subtle and compassionate understanding of the human heart
A strange, unsettling story
This is a dark, weird, gloriously feminist story of a girl in 1763 pushing against the limits of her role and a dark love story.
A story of dispassionate, bloody brilliance rich in believable period detail
Actress and former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis has created a surprising blend of psychological thriller and revenge tragedy in her debut novel... In Vanity Fair, Thackeray demonstrated how society determines character, and this suggestion underlies Ellis's robust and textured vision of the Georgian mindset. But from it emerges an unsettling portrait of a deeply damaged individual whose capacity for creating mayhem is timeless
A gripping girl-power story
Ellis weaves her tale with deft skill, striking imagery and a boldness rare in a first novel
The debut novel from the ex-Blue Peter presenter is a doozy
Janet Ellis has written one of the most hotly-tipped debuts of 2016
Former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis has burst on to the literary scene with a bodice-ripping thriller... Ellis evokes the sights, sounds and smells of Georgian London and turns a telling phrase that captures on 18th-century cadence
Anne Jaccob is the audacious heroine of this dark, historical debut from former Blue Peter presenter Janet Ellis
Dark, packed with surprises and with a feisty unforgettable heroine, this is a top-class debut (Fanny Blake)
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