Review: Victorian Romance, Gothic Horror
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 1, 2012
Cullanin has written a magnificent novel about early Victorian England with two deeply flawed, deeply hurting protagonists and lovers and a horrific monster, hence my title.  Lord George Albert Westin [Wes or Albert, as Michael called him] was the second son of a Marquess, and his lover was Michael Vallant, a professional whore and sodomite.  Albert was badly traumatized as a young boy and as a result developed a terrible stutter, about which he was deeply embarrassed to the point of being a social hermit, and because of which he developed an addiction to opium.  As a boy of about 12, Michael was sold by his mother, herself a whore, to a nobleman who chained him in a room and repeatedly raped him for several months.  At the first opportunity, Michael ran away to the streets and met the young man who became his savior, his best friend, first lover, and later his pimp.  I detect a note of irony in Ms. Cullanin naming the pimp/friend/lover/savior "Rodger," as in the Artful Dodger from Dickens's "Oliver," then making Dickens Michael's favorite author and so clearly modeling Rodger on Dickens's Dodger.  The book introduced another delightful, if not entirely credible, character in Penny, who literally saved Albert's life and contributed strongly to the ending of the book.  The book dealt with heavy issues: mental illness, child abuse and its impact on its victims, drug addiction, the attitudes of the times on those subjects as well as on homosexual sex and relationships, and even stuttering in children.  The latter was quite realistically reminiscent of last year's brilliant movie "The King's Speech."Cullanin's development of the love story between Albert and Michael was touching and credible, considering all the baggage both characters brought to the story.  What sex was involved was sketchy and integrated well into the story line, though the fact that the lovers were homosexual was secondary to the story.  It would have been as good and not required many changes if Michael had been drawn as a woman instead of a man.  The conflict in the story was strong and well developed, both between the two lovers themselves and between them and other characters and society at large, to the extent that I was never sure whether or not the ending would be happy for them, even though the genre generally requires it.  I gladly rate the novel at 5 stars and strongly recommend it to any interested in a good read.