The Animals at
Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey 352 pages
Most
of the London museums are sending their collections to be housed in British country
estates throughout the English countryside. While author Healey was researching the
history of London’s Natural History Museum, she came across an article
referring to the “wartime eviction of its collections.” And the people who
agreed to house them for the duration. Already fascinated by the “eeriness of
of taxidermied animals,” sparked her imagination and this novel was born.
Thirty-year-old
Hetty Carwright is sent to oversee a large portion of the mammal collection,
including a polar bear, hummingbirds, an elephant, a jaguar, butterflies and
beetles, a black panther, a lion, a lynx, an infested owl and many, many more.
While she is grateful to Lord Lockwood for so generously opening his home, she isn’t
prepared for the amount of work that will be involved to keep her charges safe.
And
she isn’t prepared for the hauntingly beautiful, and rather disturbed, daughter
of the Manor, Lucy.
The
story is told from two points of view: Hetty’s and Lucy’s. Healey used italics
for all of Lucy’s chapters, which only served to both annoy me and up the
creepiness factor.
Hetty
has her hands full with protecting the animals from guests and servants, and even
from Lord Lockwood himself. Plus, there
are secrets in the manor. Secrets I never saw coming until it was too late. Oh
I had my suspicions, but they weren’t nearly as unsettling as the truth. And
the end was magnificent; I will be thinking about it for weeks to come.
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