The Lost Apothecary
Book Review - The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
HBL Note: Every once in awhile (a rare enough occurrence that I’m still fascinated by it) a debut novelist captures the attention of the right people at the right time for their first book to cause quite the stir in the publishing industry. Sarah Penner’s book, The Lost Apothecary, has already sold in 12 countries and the publisher expects it to be, “one of the biggest of the Winter season.”
Book Review - The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
So obviously I had to read it. The Lost Apothecary is about a woman who travels to London as a way to distance herself from her cheating husband. She goes on a mudlarking adventure (more on this later…fascinating stuff!) and finds an old apothecary jar which sparks her to research its origins. The dual timeline book jumps between this present day story and the story of the Apothecary in the late 1700s. It is told from three perspectives: the present day woman, Caroline; the apothecary, Nella; and a young girl, Eliza.
I really enjoyed this book, but what captivated me the most was learning about mudlarking. In the acknowledgments section, Sarah Penner gives a shout out to “Florrie” Evans who she met while “mudlarking on the River Thames in the summer of 2019.” I looked her up on Instagram, per Sarah’s suggestion, and found myself falling down the rabbit hole of fascinating historic finds in the mud of the River Thames. I’m including a post from her Instagram account (@flo_finds) here so you can get lost in her beautiful photographs, too.
Book Review - The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
From the publisher:
A stunning exploration of the power of women’s relationships with one another and of women rebelling against the society that limits them, THE LOST APOTHECARY follows three women who change each other’s lives across the barrier of time. Nella is an apothecary who keeps a hidden shop at the back of a dark alleyway in 18th century London. There, she dispenses poisons to liberate women from the oppressive men in their lives. She has two rules: the poison must never be used to harm another woman and the names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in her register. When 12-year-old Eliza arrives at her shop seeking poison on behalf of her mistress, an unexpected friendship develops setting in motion a series of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world.
In the present-day, aspiring historian Caroline spends her tenth wedding anniversary in London alone, reeling from the recent discovery of her husband’s infidelity. As she reevaluates her life and what she wants she finds a small vial while mudlarking in the River Thames. Intrigued, she throws herself into researching the vile and suspects she’s found the culprit in the never-solved “apothecary murders” that haunted London two hundred years earlier. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate.
Penner was initially inspired to write THE LOST APOTHECARY while looking through a book of mudlarking finds in 2016. “Mudlarking is a pastime for many Londoners, having been around for centuries, but recently experienced a resurgence in popularity,” explains Penner. She imagined a story of a woman finding a mysterious vial and tracing its sinister history. Enthralled by the scandal of 18th century London, a time when reliable poison detection methods did not yet exist, and when women had few options for power and influence and were lost to history simply because they did not have an equal say in society, she chose to set the book then. “My book is on way to explore that reality and remediate, even if only in a fictional way,” she writes.
Book Review - The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner
