Travelling through Victorian-era Egypt we meet Miss Clementine Attridge. She has been obsessed with Egyptology since childhood and is especially fond of the legend of the goddess NEPHTHYS.
Clemmie was influenced by her late father, who performed for a rich audience, to astound with Egyptian goods and mummies. But the sisters, Clemmie and Rosetta, are now alone in the world, feeling that a curse may have descended from the grave goods. Clemmie wants to discover more and try to put matters right.
We learn about the legends of sisters Isis and Nephthys on Clemmie’s journey up the Nile. She wanted to hire a private boat, but of course, at the time this was not considered either seemly or safe. A small travelling party of British people forms and a nice Victorian mystery ensues.
I could have done without the repeated returns to the time of her father because I did get the point quite quickly that a curse might be involved or suspected. I didn’t need the many chapters of debates on unwrapping mummies for entertainment and how young women should know their place. I stopped reading them as they just felt like padding and I wanted to get on with the desert adventure. Rosetta is unable to travel, and Clemmie telegraphs back to her occasionally.
The other characters, such as Rowland Luscombe and Celia Lion, enliven the tale and add solid form to the journey. Whether a shooting enthusiast keen to bag a crocodile, a young local woman cooking and observing the guests, or a flirty young miss packed off with an escort to keep her out of trouble, it’s all good. Clemmie might resent the companions, but it would have been a much duller expedition for the reader without them. Besides this, the desert isn’t safe, with bandits, tomb robbers and petty thieves. Seems the Nile is no place for a lady.
Rachel Louise Driscoll has tried to give a flavour of how little was generally known about Ancient Egypt, and how brisk the ravages of antiquities became once sales were underway, legal or illegal. We also learn some of the politics of the day, and through Clemmie’s example, see how asthma sufferers were treated. That’s a lot to pack into a novel. NEPHTHYS builds on recent non-fiction books about women explorers and students in Egypt before the Great War. Anyone interested in this period – and a haunting suspense story – will enjoy the work.
A young Victorian Egyptologist traverses the Nile River on a mission to undo a curse that may have befallen her family in this spellbinding debut novel.
Essex, 1887. Clementine’s ability to read hieroglyphs makes her invaluable at her father's Egyptian relic parties, which have become the talk of the town. But at one such party, the words she interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. As her childhood games about Isis and Nephthys—sister goddesses who protect the dead—take on a devastating resonance in her life, and tragedy slowly consumes her loved ones, she wonders what she and her father may have unleashed . . .
Five years later, Clemmie arrives in Cairo desperate to save what remains of her family back home. There, she meets a motley crew of unwitting English travelers about to set sail down the Nile—including an adventurer with secrets of his own—and joins them on a mission to reach Denderah, a revered religious site, where she hopes to return the amulet and atone for her sins.
With each passing day, she is further engulfed in a life she’s yearned for all along. But as long-buried secrets and betrayals rise to the surface, Clemmie must reconcile the impossibility of living in the light while her past keeps her anchored to the darkness.
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