1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.
"Being solitary isn't a disease that needs a cure".
Natasha Pulley's The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a delightful debut. I'm slowly but surely reading every book by this author and bemoaning the fact that she slipped under my radar for so long. This book is a breath of fresh air, a whimsical historical novel with touches of magical realism and a fantastic cast. The author isn't afraid to write complex characters, people of dubious morality, even unlikable.
The main narrator, Thaniel, is thrown into a mystery; in the course of trying to solve it, he finds the elusive watchmaker who could be more sinister than one sees at first glance. Thaniel is fascinated, and strikes up a deep friendship that might evolve into something more, with striking moments of tenderness and references to the homophobic laws of the time. Thaniel is fiercely loyal, and his synesthesia makes for a lovely excuse to really delve into some gorgeous prose, while also being a plot point that helps him.
The watchmaker Mori, as we get to know him, especially thanks to a few flashbacks to his past (never through his eyes, always through someone else's POV) is an intriguing figure that slowly reveals itself, and still at the end of the novel we're left with so many questions about him.His gift is terrifying, not only for those around him (and I had to understand the female character's fears, Grace with her scientific mind, trapped in the role the times force her to take if she wants to still follow her studies), but also for himself, as it makes him remember and forget to a frightening degree.
The glimpses of history, the focus on Japan, and the mechanical wonders created by Mori, made for a gorgeous story. The resolution was a bit rushed, especially a chapter that explained things going on behind the scenes, and the aether seems more of a gimmick than a plot point, but the mystery was solved like clockwork.
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a quiet marvel.
✨ 4 stars
📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:
* A Marvellous Light, by Freya Marske
for: visions, magical England
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