Things in Jars

  

Things in Jars by Jess Kidd

      Sometimes you just know you’re going to like a book. I’ve read Jess Kidd’s books and fell for her writing voice. She is the kind of author that makes you stop and re-read a paragraph, a sentence, a whole page, just to hear it again in your head. And then maybe you smile and dog ear the page so you can go back to it and read it again later. Well, I did something with Things in Jars that I just don’t ever do. I finished the book and then read it all over again. I just wanted to hear it in my head again. So, is it the author’s style, is it her language, is it the story itself? All of it.

       The story takes place on the dark side of Victorian London, the body snatching for medical knowledge side of London. The fascination with oddities in nature including oddities in children side of London. Bridie Devine was a street child brought to London from ireland and then sold by her caretaker to a doctor who was impressed with Bridie’s lack of “eewww” factor around a bloody dead body especially in a child who guessed her age at about seven.

       When we meet Bridie she is charged by Sir Edmund Athelstan Berwick to find his kidnapped daughter, Christabel. Sir Edmund tells Bridie that only three people know of Christabel’s existence. One would think this narrows the focus of her search for kidnapper but it turns out Sir Edmund’s background isn’t sterling and his Christabel is an oddity and she isn’t his, as it turns out, he acquired her.

       The story is cast with the misfits, the overlooked, those whose body would be stepped over in a gutter. But to Bridie they were hers. We are led through dark, dirty, smelly alleys and the author tells us exactly what those smells are. She invites us to close our eyes while making our way through the streets so we can identify the stench. This is one of the pages I turned down to read again. Who does this the way she does???

       This story is set in a time when curiosities are collected and stored in bottles on shelves. The race is on to put Christabel in one of those jars, to make a few coins off her or for Bridie to liberate her and maybe vindicate herself from the failed attempt to save a young boy recently. Oh, and did I mention her ghost accomplice?

       I’ve read this book twice in a month. You’d be doing well for yourself to read it once and savor every single word.