A Journey to Enlightenment
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An only child, raised by her alchemist father, but without a mother, Emille Selden lives a life of seclusion. She has a brilliant mind, but her upbringing hasn't prepared her for the pitfalls of `coming of age' and the ways of men. The Alchemist's Daughter is essentially a historical romance, but its richness in detail with regard to the early 18th century, particularly with reference to scientific discovery, sets it above a simple romance. Emille is an admirable heroine - a survivor. A very worthwhile read.
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The Alchemist's Daughter
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This is a wonderful story. The characters are beautifully described and believable, they have been given detailed physical appearance (you can see them, smell them, almost touch them) and a deep psychological dimension (one would like to shout at them or cry with them). The author skillfully makes the plot rich with details about science, society, colonization, religion... with such a rhythm that it is difficult to put the book down.
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A great read, McMahon really has got the chemistry right...
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Well, as soon as you start to read this novel something seems a miss. Emilie's father, John, keeps her birth shrouded in secret until Emilie makes some disturbing mistakes of her own and finds out what life is really like for the unprotected. A great coming of age story - it really seems to be McMahon's forte. Prepare to immerse yourself in the isolation of the manor house: take a historical romp through the back streets of London in the 1720s, stand quietly with your back to the archaic books in Selden's laboratory as he performs yet another life-risking experiment...Definitely worth reading.
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A good start that eventually let us down
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In many ways it is an interesting book, well-written and well-researched.The story of Emily, beautiful, black-eyed daughter of a recluse alchemist who has been sheltered from the world and taught everything except how to see behind people's exteriors is engaging at first.But then, there is so much that is hard to believe that the plot suffers from not very much to tell in the second part of the book, resorting therefore to shock tactics worthy of a 21st century soap opera scenario. What a pity!
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Intriguing, exhileratingly different
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McMahon has the ability to take a traditional genre and turn it into something more subversive: while it doesn't work quite as successfully here as in 'the rose of sebastopol' there is still the same literary sleight of hand. She has the ability to disorientate you beautifully so that you think you're reading one kind of novel/story and then find yourself reading something quite different.
Set in the C18th Enlightenment, she really captures the language of 'natural philosophy' in Emilie's thoughts, so that she sees the world through the prism of burgeoning science. The characters are nicely prickly, with no-one as the archetypal 'hero' or 'villain', and the language lush and evocative without ever being too gothic or romantic. This is a nicely judged and intriguingly different read from an author to be watched.
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