The Fig Eater
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- £3.99
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- £3.99
Publisher Description
He watches her eating one fig, then two more, grinding the seeds between her teeth, the sound echoing in her head, perhaps the last sound Dora heard before there was the thunder of blood in her ears...
Vienna, 1910. On a warm August night, the body of a young girl is discovered in the city's celebrated Volksgarten. She has been strangled. Using the latest forensic methods and psychological thinking, the Chief Inspector of Police begins his painstaking search for the killer. He is not alone, however. His wife Erszébet - an exotic, passionate woman steeped in the folk tales and Gypsy lore of her native Hungary - becomes obsessed with the dead girl. In secret, and enlisting the help of a young English governess, she conducts her own investigation of the murder, guided by intuition, instinct and superstition...
With its beautifully-evoked setting of Vienna just prior to the Great War, a city embracing the modern and yet in thrall to superstition and prejudice, and riven by corruption, perverse sexual practices and disease, The Fig Eater is a rich and seductive period page-turner of a novel.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Fashion writer Shields (All That Glitters; A Stylish History) achieves atmospheric suspense in her compelling first novel, set in 1910 in Freud's Vienna. It opens on the discovery of the grisly murder of a young woman, Dora (whose name recalls Freud's famous patient), found strangled in a disreputable part of town. Two separate investigations are launched, only one official. The unnamed Inspector, with his assistant, Franz, begins with the physical evidence at the scene, and later watches for telltale signals from his initial crop of suspects: Dora's mother and father, her lover and his wife. He interprets their reactions by means of his growing familiarity with psychoanalysis, a pioneering work of which is excerpted throughout the novel. Meanwhile, his wife, Ersz bet, an amateur painter and Hungarian mystic, begins her own clandestine inquiries with the help of a young English governess, Wally. Their first substantial piece of evidence is the undigested fig removed from Dora's stomach. They become convinced that this is the key to solving the case, as figs cannot grow in Vienna's cold winters and are apparently not imported fresh from warmer climes. Ersz bet also believes that Gypsy spells and superstitions might divine knowledge about the crime, while the Inspector searches more or less by the book. These two very different styles of inquiry lead to discoveries that keep the competing sleuths neck-and-neck until the final pages. Though the plot is intricate and the mystery promising, Shields's language can be uneven. Often lushly descriptive, at times the prose is restrained to the point of detachment, somewhat distancing the reader from the characters. A sprinkling of Hungarian legend and Gypsy lore adds another layer of color to Shields's evocation of the era, while literary references, contemporary art, medical theories, occult practices, botanical information and the engaging details of Viennese life build a picture of a city in the throes of turbulent intellectual and social change. 5-city author tour; U.K. rights sold to Doubleday/Black Swan; film rights sold to Miramax.
