Jack the Ripper, Phossy Jaw, and the Elephant Man may seem like sadistic carnival attractions from the past but they are not. However, they are bits and pieces of history that center around a singular time period. A time period that Matthew J. Kirby began to research and then decided that by a not so distant stretch of his imagination, these people and situations could have intertwined within each other’s lives. Out of this brilliant feat of imagination comes a ghost story that is drenched in historical fact and dipped in narrative fiction. I hope you will check out and enjoy Kirby’s A Taste for Monsters.
London 1888, and Jack the Ripper is terrorizing the people of the city. Evelyn, a young woman disfigured by her dangerous work in a matchstick factory with nowhere to go, does not know what to make of her new position as a maid to the Elephant Man in London Hospital. Evelyn wanted to be locked away from the world, like he is, shut away from the filth and dangers of the streets. But in Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, she finds a gentle kindred, who does not recoil from her, and who understands her pain.
When the murders begin, however, Joseph and Evelyn are haunted nightly by the ghosts of the Ripper’s dead, setting Evelyn on a path to facing her fears and uncovering humanity’s worst nightmares, in which the real monsters are men.
Be First to Comment