A review of Bellman and Black

Bellman and Black is a slow-paced, creepily evocative ghost story with a pervading sense of suspended dread that builds and builds to a fever pitch… and then deflates like a pinholed balloon. Some will tell you that Diane Setterfield's second novel is too slow, with a plot that unspools like the finest thread, giving only a glimmer of new information with each turn. Others will say that Setterfield spends too much time on the rich detail of Victorian life and not enough on her characters. But the problem with this book is neither the deliciously glacial pace nor the purposely light touch on the characters. The problem is that the story poses a whole bunch of intriguing questions and then leaves a lot of them unanswered and the others poorly concluded.

For instance, (SPOILER) the action kicks off with an incident in William Bellman's childhood, when he kills a rook with an extremely well-thrown stone to impress his friends. This incident is recalled throughout the book in various ways and is even used as part of the blurb on the back cover. We're given to understand that this event is hugely momentous and important and potentially the source for all that follows. But by the end of the book, we don't understand this event or its importance or if it was the source or not or what that might mean. In fact, the ending rather calls into question whether this was an important incident at all or just something that stood out so much in William's mind that he never stopped thinking about it. The other big question, just who is Mr. Black, is also answered entirely unsatisfactorily. He either is who he seems to be at the end, which is really annoying and doesn't entirely make sense, or the ending is so impenetrable that it's not at all clear what's happening or indeed what happened any of the book has been about.

And it's a real shame because the build up is so beautifully written and so wonderfully chilling. Like the best ghost stories, Bellman and Black doesn't just rely on the cheap jump-out-of-your-seat moments. Every word in the book is saturated in an oppressive atmosphere of dread, like you're reading the book under your very own dark thundercloud, which never quite manages to break into rain. William's Victorian world, from the mill to London, is brought to full breathing life by a massive attention to detail and a real sense of Setterfield's love of this time, so much so that it's nearly a character of its own. The rook interludes, rather than being an irritating break in the narrative, are craftily woven into the tale. But building the reader up so high has its own pitfalls and Setterfield falls squarely into one. After the slow burn towards the climax, the ending is a damp squib that makes you almost, though not quite, regret sticking with it.

Bellman and Black is available in the UK on October 10 and in the US on November 5.