The Disenchantment

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On the weaker side, I don’t think all of the characters or their motives were fully developed to me. The romance between the two main women was what I was most excited for but turned into the least interesting perspective overall. It also felt like a lot of really cool elements of sapphic love, a murder investigation, witches, and different power dynamics, but it just didn’t seem to all come together. Despite life and death being literally on the line, the stakes never fully sunk in. The daily norms of those living in 17th century Paris with the frivolity, the decadence, but also the oppression and the poverty is beautifully, yet brutally captured. Alluring, captivating and truly breathtaking at moments, Celia Bell has a remarkable talent for turning attention to detail into a vivid and bewitching narrative. Join Book Club: Delivered to your inbox every Friday, a selection of publishing news, literary observations, poetry recommendations and more from Book World writer Ron Charles. Sign up for the newsletter.

So it surprised him when she smiled at her son and patted his hair with her hand. No part of her, except her hand and the wrist attached to it, moved–it was like watching a puppet’s hand, pulled smoothly through the air on a string. At that moment the stone woman heard footsteps behind her, so heavy that they shook the earth, and a shadow fell over the gate. Slowly she turned and, dropping into her lowest curtsey, she murmured, “Good evening, husband.” For the ogre had come home for the evening.’The Disenchantment] explores the court of Louis XIV in 17th century France, where two noblewomen fall in love amongst dark magic and intrigue. From the most elite salons to the grittiest quartiers, Bell weaves a tale that is complex and compelling.” In summer 2024, Serpent’s Tail will publish Tongueless by Lau Yee-Wa, translated by Jennifer Feeley, for which Cohen obtained world English-language rights from Li Kangqin at the New River Agency. Described as a "haunting exploration of betrayal and manipulation", the novel follows two rival teachers at a secondary school in Hong Kong, who are instructed to switch from teaching in Cantonese to Mandarin—or lose their jobs. Wai crumples under the pressure and dies by suicide, leaving her colleague Ling to face seismic political and cultural change alone and uncertain of her role in the other’s demise. No,’ said Madame de Cardonnoy. ‘She wasn’t afraid. For her heart, too, was made of stone, so that both fear and pity were beyond her.’ Mary Catherine was a beautifully written character with a fierce love and determination. And this was a debut!!!!

The Disenchantment is historical fiction at its best, authentic, captivating and bewitching. It's difficult to believe this is a debut, so strong is the storytelling, characterisation and ambience. Filled with rich and beautiful detail that brings 17th Century Paris alive. The sights, the smells, the oppression and suspicions all feel very real in this evocative, atmospheric tale of intrigue and sapphic love. A shimmering, sexy, thrilling tale of intrigue and desire, and the dark paths we walk to keep our secrets safe. Bell has written a shining debut.” A secret romance between two noblewomen in 1680s Paris is threatened by the Affair of the Poisons in this bewitching work of historical fiction. A "bold and unsettling" debut novel from an acclaimed Dutch poet about race, belonging and the legacies of violence, it sees Atabong arrive at a juvenile detention centre to start a six-month sentence for an act of vengeance after years of racist bullying. Instead of the simplistic contrition she is expected to feel by the counsellors, the protagonist arrives at her own complex understanding of remorse, rehabilitation and dignity. A shimmering, sexy, thrilling tale of intrigue and desire, and the dark paths we walk to keep our secrets safe. Bell has written a shining debut' Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Dance Tree

The villagers were afraid,’ she said, ‘for none of them had ever seen such magic, but for the first time they felt some hope in the face of their fate, and so they dressed the stone woman in a gown of red silk – the best that any of them had, the best their daughters had left behind – and they combed and plaited her white stone hair, and put slippers on her feet, and then the oldest of the men took her by the hand and led her to the forest’s edge, where he thanked her and left her in the shadow of the trees.’ I finished this one on audio yesterday and it’s a great slice of queer, feminist historical fiction! Everyone connected to the court of Louis XIV has something to hide. For the Baroness Marie Catherine, it is the pleasures she seeks outside of her unhappy marriage, indulging in a more liberated existence of decadent salons and discussions with writers and scholars. At the centre of her illicit freedom is her lover Victoire Rose de Bourbon, Mademoiselle de Conti, the androgynous, self-assured countess. Propel[s] us into the epicentre of a 17th century Paris where breaking out of the prison of arranged marriage is only one of the many challenges confronting women.”—Lisa Appignanesi, author of Everyday Madness A beautiful slow burn, this novel is a dark investigation of humanity and what one would do in the name of love.

What do you think? Have you read The Disenchantment by Celia Bell? Is it on your TBR? Let’s talk in the comments below. RELATED: I throughly enjoyed this tale of magic, deception and desire and I can't wait to see what the author writes next. Lavoie raised an eyebrow at her. It was the first slip in his painstakingly correct manners, and Madame de Cardonnoy had to suppress a laugh. He was still a young man, perhaps not quite thirty, and it was clear that he found the portrait a little boring. She thought it had only just occurred to him that she might have chosen the subject of the tale to flatter him, as well as to entertain the children. They’re just children’s stories,’ Madame de Cardonnoy said. ‘Mother Goose tales. There’s nothing to take credit for.’ For himself, Lavoie was attempting not to show how the wealth of the room discomforted him. It always happened like that at the beginning of a new sitting–he’d spend an hour worrying over whether his subjects would notice the worn collar on his silk coat, before his work had the opportunity to speak for itself. It was difficult to feel self-assured in a room with so much gilding on the furniture, even though Lavoie had painted the baron himself six months ago.You feel the ever present pressure of societal expectations on the characters along with their strained actions to break free from them and Marie Catherine's recurring fairytales throughout the novel highlight the desperate desire for escapism. If he had been painting the portrait according to his own designs, and not according to custom, Lavoie would have liked to show the way the boy’s head tilted upwards to watch his mother speak, his mouth hanging slightly open, as if he could look through her face and into the scene that she was describing. Instead, he outlined his face half from memory, looking straight out from the canvas. Set in seventeenth-century Paris, The Disenchantment follows Baroness Marie Catherine, who lives in a world of luxury, entertainment, and intrigue. However, there is also an undercurrent of darkness racing through Parisian nobility: rumours of witchcraft, deliberate poisoning, and fraud abound, and the voracity of the rumour mill means no one is completely safe. Marie Catherine hides her own secrets. Her tyrannical and distant husband is an oppressive and regulatory force, and when he is home she does all she can to protect her children from him by telling them fairy stories. However, when he is away, Marie Catherine is free to engage with her intellectual pursuits, including salons and spirited conversations with female scholars and writers.