The Butcher's Daughter
The Hitherto Untold Story of Mrs. Lovett
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
The story of the vengeful barber Sweeney Todd has gripped fans across literary, stage, and screen renditions—but little has been told of Mrs. Lovett, Todd’s partner in crime. Until now.
Enclosed herewith: a bloodcurdling correspondence of horror and intrigue, based on the original Victorian penny dreadful that started it all.
“Your fingers may bleed with paper cuts as you tear through The Butcher's Daughter . . . I am spellbound."—Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked
London, 1887: At the abandoned apartment of a missing young woman, a dossier of evidence is collected, ordered chronologically, and sent to the Chief Inspector of the London Metropolitan Police. It contains a frightening correspondence between an inquisitive journalist, Miss Emily Gibson, and the woman Gibson thinks may be the infamous Mrs. Lovett—Sweeney Todd’s accomplice, “a wicked woman” who baked men into pies and sold them in her pie shop on Fleet Street. The talk of London Town—even decades after her horrendous misdeeds.
As the woman relays the harrowing account of her life in the unruly and perilous streets of Victorian London, her missives unlock an intricate mystery that brings Miss Gibson closer to the truth, even as that truth may cost her everything. A hair-raising and breathtaking novel for fans of Sarah Waters and Gregory Maguire, The Butcher’s Daughter is an irresistible literary thriller that draws richly from historical sources and shines new light on the woman behind the counter of the most disreputable pie shop ever known.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mrs. Lovett, the cannibalistic, meat-pie-making accomplice of barbaric barber Sweeney Todd, gets her own melodramatic backstory in this dark retelling of the Victorian penny dreadful from Demchuk (Red X) and debut author Clark. In 1887, journalist Emily Gibson searches for the infamous Margery Lovett. She believes she's found her in Margaret Evans, a self-described "prisoner" living among the sisters at St. Anne's Priory, whose story plays out through a series of letters between the two women. Margaret recounts her childhood as the daughter of a butcher and her time as a maid in the household of a ghoulish London surgeon, where she is impregnated by her employer and forced to flee. Though punctuated with occasional creepy incidents, these early chapters feel like perfunctory episodes in Margaret's gradual awakening to her power—which comes to roaring life when her child, purportedly stillborn, is snatched away from her. Adopting the Lovett persona and trade, a vengeful Margaret partners with psychotic Sweeney and the story goes full tilt ripping yarn, acquiring new energy and lurid gusto. Though the authors fiddle with the Sweeney legend as most horror and Broadway fans know it, they build to a startling final twist that readers will think worth the liberties taken. It's a bloody good time.
Customer Reviews
Excellent
I didn’t see that ending. Very good.