A great read, McMahon really has got the chemistry right... - Rated 
Well, as soon as you start to read this novel something seems a miss. Emilie's father, John, keeps her birth shrouded in secret until Emilie makes some disturbing mistakes of her own and finds out what life is really like for the unprotected. A great coming of age story - it really seems to be McMahon's forte. Prepare to immerse yourself in the isolation of the manor house: take a historical romp through the back streets of London in the 1720s, stand quietly with your back to the archaic books in Selden's laboratory as he performs yet another life-risking experiment...Definitely worth reading.
A good start that eventually let us down - Rated 
In many ways it is an interesting book, well-written and well-researched.The story of Emily, beautiful, black-eyed daughter of a recluse alchemist who has been sheltered from the world and taught everything except how to see behind people's exteriors is engaging at first.But then, there is so much that is hard to believe that the plot suffers from not very much to tell in the second part of the book, resorting therefore to shock tactics worthy of a 21st century soap opera scenario. What a pity!
Intriguing, exhileratingly different - Rated
McMahon has the ability to take a traditional genre and turn it into something more subversive: while it doesn't work quite as successfully here as in 'the rose of sebastopol' there is still the same literary sleight of hand. She has the ability to disorientate you beautifully so that you think you're reading one kind of novel/story and then find yourself reading something quite different.
Set in the C18th Enlightenment, she really captures the language of 'natural philosophy' in Emilie's thoughts, so that she sees the world through the prism of burgeoning science. The characters are nicely prickly, with no-one as the archetypal 'hero' or 'villain', and the language lush and evocative without ever being too gothic or romantic. This is a nicely judged and intriguingly different read from an author to be watched.
Highly recommended - Rated
Katharine McMahon has crafted a beautifully written novel, starting from an original idea for a plot: what if you would raise a child protected from other human beings and society, focusing solely on building her scientific knowledge?
That is exactly what Sir John Selden does with his daughter Emilie in the early 1700s. By the age of nineteen Emilie is as well-versed in physics and chemistry as any fellow of the Royal Society, but blissfully innocent of human nature. When Robert Aislabie, a gentleman from London, enters the world of Selden manor she is swept of her feet and enters a whole new world where - to her regret - she will discover that, contrary to the natural world, not all is as it seems when dealing with humans.
I found this a very well-written and thought-provoking book about human relationships, love, knowledge, emotional intelligence, and even the raising of children (if you have children yourself, as I do, I think you can't help reflecting on these aspects: should you shield them from an world full of duplicity and deceit, or immerse them in it all the better to prepare them?)
A great read.
Dreamlike and Languid - Rated 
This book is worthy of the excellent reviews which it has received. From the very first page McMahon develops an atmosphere as smokey and complex as the alchemical experiments which underpin her story. Although it could be read as a fairly conventional love story, to do so would be to miss the wealth of interesting historical detail which is infused throughout the text. It provides an almost lazy read, waiting without concern about time for the plot to unfurl, as Em and her father wait for their experiments to come to fruition.
Excellent - well worth reading.
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