Maisie spent her early childhood in a ramshackle shed of a house belonging to her foster parents. It isn’t a home though, when the adults in charge are happy to collect the money but not provide the care. The children are cold, hungry and dressed in rags. Luckily she has best friend Tommy to dream about a better future with. One day they find a fairground flyer with a beautiful illustration of a carousel. Maisie keeps it with her and many years later, across the Atlantic Ocean, she meets the carousel again. Her wealthy guardian Sir Malcolm ships it over to America and sits it in the grounds of his mansion. When Maisie decides to hold a party for local children she is so happy to see the carousel being used. It’s finally full of happy smiling faces, but when the ride stops there is one less child on the ride. The little boy on the caramel horse is nowhere to be seen. Maisie finds this particular horse hypnotic, it’s different to the others with the blue diamond decoration on it’s forehead and surrounded by the letters OEHT. She has no idea what it means. Maisie is taken in for questioning, but she’s surprised when a French detective arrives. Someone has already disappeared from this very carousel and a man went to the guillotine, found guilty of murder. Could there be a US accomplice? Or is there something magical about this particular carousel after all?
The novel is set in the early 20th Century and takes us from Paris to Chicago. Maisie certainly has a varied life after such humble beginnings, plucked from the shack by her Aunt Mabel who introduces her to Sir Malcolm and his daughter Catherine. Maisie only just starts to trust her new life when it is ripped away by Spanish influenza. As Maisie slowly recovers, she’s told that both her aunt and new friend Catherine didn’t survive. Maisie is sure she’ll be sent back to her foster home, so she’s surprised when Sir Malcolm asks if she’d like to accompany him to the USA. He’s bought a large house and land near Chicago. Once they’re settled in, Maisie feels like she has a home for the first time and like she has a father figure. I found Maisie smart and resourceful, very capable of helping out with business especially when time has passed since the terrible disappearance of the little boy and they start to discuss a business opportunity. They decide to build a theme park, with the carousel at the centre and call it Silver Kingdom. Maisie throws herself into work and while there’s still the residual trauma of losing her parents and then her aunt, she does start to find her feet. She jumps into the next choice far too quickly at times, but it’s an instinct born of trauma. The anxiety of feeling unsafe is too much so she is vulnerable to people who prey on that and makes bad choices.
She also struggles with fitting in. She is often asked about her heritage because of her dark complexion, but having no memory of her parents she can’t answer. The milk lady, Mrs Papadopolous, says she’s Greek. The fairground runners think she might be one of them, or possibly Italian. She feels rootless, as if a wind might whisk her away at any moment. Continuation and motherhood are themes that run throughout and the women made an impression on me. Mrs Papadopolous is warm and loving towards Maisie, giving her a sense of belonging by saying that home isn’t a place, it’s knowing who you are. There’s also a fortune teller who is always keen to tell Maisie her future, but notices that she’s the only person on the fairground who’s never asked. She makes is clear that Maisie does need to be on her guard, especially where the fairground is concerned. Whereas Sir Malcolm’s sister-in-lane seems to pit herself against Maisie from the start. Perhaps always expecting to inherit his money, she is put out by this orphan who seems to have usurped them. Nancy struggles to conceive and doesn’t cope, descending into alcoholism and bitterness. When Maisie is pregnant the rivalry worsens although she does try to be gentle, knowing that she has everything Nancy wants.
A love story weaves through the mystery very well, with all the traditional obstacles and absences you would expect. There were times I was screaming at Maisie to open her post! Especially when there were misunderstandings and having the whole picture was dependent on the next letter. Her love for Laurent is all encompassing, that once in a lifetime love that lasts forever. They do miscommunicate a lot, mainly due to not expressing their true feelings or not being free. The ‘will they – won’t they’ does last years and I so wanted them to find a way back to each other. There were some parts where I was so engrossed in the romance that I totally forgot there was a mystery to solve. There was also her husband’s bootlegging, the search for Maisie’s birth parents, the drama surrounding a character’s will and each of these strands did take my mind away from the central case a little. After the carousel claims another victim, Maisie decides to encase the caramel horse in glass, so no one else can ride it. I was so looking forward to a magical explanation or for the mystery never to be solved. I wanted to see Maisie’s original vision realised. When she first rode the horse she had a vision or hallucination with stars and what she thinks might be a glimpse of another time or dimension. It was this magical element that kept me reading, rather than an urge to solve the case. That said, the author found a way to do both leaving me with a sense of satisfaction but also a little touch of intrigue.
Out now from Penguin Michael Joseph
Meet the Author
Fiza Saeed McLynn is a British novelist born in Karachi to an English mother and a Pakistani father. She moved to London as a child. After reading Modern History at Oxford University, she had a brief career in finance and then spent the next twelve years helping the bereaved as part of her work as a complementary therapist. Fiza now writes full time from her home in London, which she shares with her American husband, and two children.
The Lotus Readers 