Australian author Angela Meyer's A Superior Spectre may be described as a work of soft science fiction where technological innovations are far less important than the human experiences affected by them. The curious relationship between the story's two protagonists is established after a piece of experimental technology is employed to form a psychological link between them.

In this book published in 2018, Jeff, from 2024, is dying. Haunting by memories and the shame of his dark desires, he flees Australia's ID-implant security systems and hides in remote Scotland with a service robot. It is to this “appliance” that he dictates his life's stories as some sort of confession.

Also recorded by the robot is Jeff's account of his mind-travel to Scottish Highlands of the 1860s, where he occupies the mind of a young woman named Leonora. As the isolated, self-pitying and physically deteriorating Jeff ignores the warning that he can only do so three times, he is utterly and irrevocably changing Leonora's life.

The Leonora Before is content with her life outdoors, endlessly curious about the crops, gardens and farm animals. Fascinated by how “inquiry brought knowledge while it also unearthed new mysteries”, she is in the process of befriending the local laird when her father decides to send her to Edinburgh, a sooty city. She laments:

“How does one get used to this? The relentless black, making teeth look absent and turning live colour people into photographs... Here, in Edinburgh, it comes from inside and out, clashes heavily in the air, and sinks, liquid-like, into skin and clothes, furniture and floors. It coats he back of the throat and the hides of animals. It even seems to enter the blood.”

Leonora's ability to adapt to her new life is increasingly shadowed by an unspeakable presence that lurks behind her eyes. Hallucinations of unfamiliar visions, sounds and voices cloud her mind's eye, forcing her to doubt her own sanity. Worse, constantly under the guardianship of her aunt to prevent any possible unsanctioned liaison with unsuitable men, she is physically, mentally, psychologically and sexually trapped.

Indeed, although the novel's narrative is jointly shared by the two protagonists, readers cannot help but sympathise with Leonora, whose contemporaries embrace the enlightenment and progress in medicine and engineering but remain stubbornly chained by the Victorian patriarchal paradigm. Though saddened by her plight, Jeff, in his own words, continues to allow his impulses to “infect” her because it is “addictive”.

The author's writing is lyrical and visceral, and very literary, often with artistic musings that are delightful and intriguing. These almost make Jeff a likeable character, with these words from him as an example:

“Ghosts held the answers to a realm beyond that I sometimes suspected was an actual, physical dimension, and at other times understood as a layering within one's own mind: that you created the ghosts from your unconscious. It made them no less frightening. Now I am a part of my own ghost story. I am the ghost, even before death. I straddle realms... I am departed but living on in the mind of a young woman.”

As Leonora says: “It is easier to imagine that you are possessed than to face the possibility your mind may be fooling you.” In this sense, A Superior Spectre may be seen as portraying the eternal struggle between the body and the mind. It is an acquired taste.

A unique story from an Australian author. We follow Jeff from the near future who is dying but has access to a device to access another's mind. Through this device we are introduced to Leonora from the distant past as she grapples with the images from Jeff's mind which appear in her own. Sometimes a bit creepy but interesting and held my attention.

I don't know how to classify how i feel about this book, i kinda liked it, but i kinda didn't also? I'm conflicted. I might try and articulate myself better at a later date.

Thank you to the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This us a fascinating time slip novel told in two very distinct voices, Leonora a 'witch' from the late nineteenth century and a delightful, rich character, and the rather unlikeable Jeff, who is dying and utilises new technology to enter Leonora's mind. Very cleverly written and very unusual. Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an advance copy.

Full review published on Booklover Book Reviews website >> http://bookloverbookreviews.com/2018/12/a-superior-spectre-by-angela-meyer-book-review.html

Thank you Simon & Schuster and Netgalley for an ARC of this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect as I haven’t read the outlander series that other reviewers have compared this book to.

This is different to my usual genre and I was so glad that I had the opportunity to be introduced to this book.

3.5★
“But I cannot speak to Leonora or control my effect on her. She sees Melbourne, she sees this place, she sees my past, she sees my eyes in the mirror. I am an infection.”
[Jeff, in the future]

. . .

“It is easier to imagine that you are possessed than to face the possibility your mind may be fooling you.”
[Leonora, in the past.]

Uniquely unsettling. Imaginatively disturbing. The promotional blurbs tell much of the premise of the story, so I’m not going to repeat it all here, other than to say it’s about Jeff, a middle-aged (?) Australian from the future (a bit beyond ours) and a very young woman, Leonora, living in rural Scotland in Victorian times.

People have chips implanted, so it’s impossible to hide, but hiding is what Jeff is desperate to do. He is suffering the end stages of overdosing on an experimental drug that allows him to inhabit the mind of someone in the past, which he’s been doing regularly. He runs to hide in Scotland, where he has been experiencing Leonora’s past life.

The story opens with the graphic, bloody description of Leonora skinning a rabbit. She is a child of the countryside and knows how to find and prepare food for herself and her widowed father.

Her obsession with animals extends to wanting to know what makes them (and us) work. She likes feeling around inside animals and is often called upon by neighbours to lend her small, nimble hands during a difficult lambing or calving.
[I can testify to the satisfaction of helping to deliver a newborn creature, but I digress.]

Jeff, on the other hand, is a bit of a degenerate who seems to have devoted himself to the old mantra of “if it feels good, do it”. He speaks of music from the mid 20th century, but I’m not sure if we know exactly when his part takes place. I have to say, I like how he describes they cope with the weather then.

“When I left Melbourne, it was one of those sickeningly hot days, where metal turns to liquid, and a breeze feels like a blast from a hair dryer. One of those days where people without regulation systems built into their underclothes drop dead in the street.”

A regulation system in your undies – what a great invention that would be! There are several futuristic devices, which are interesting, but the main story hinges on the gradual unhinging of Leonora, as Jeff keeps visiting her mind to experience the sensation of being a young woman in the 19th century.

They are both very physical, sexual beings, and the sexual scenes are fairly explicit, but essential to show they are each beginning to inhabit the other’s psyche. Jeff enjoys a very fluid sexuality, having liked boys since his youth, but then never outgrowing the attraction, which is not as socially acceptable as his attraction to sensual women.

“There still seems to be a deep misunderstanding, in my experience, about how complex sexuality can be, and about our capacity to desire so much, so many different types of people, at once.” [Jeff]

Leonora has always had a strong interest in the natural world and science, and she begins to question what’s happening to her. When she looks in the mirror, it’s not always her eyes she sees looking back. Is she imagining it?

“It makes me think about how powerful our thoughts can be. We might think we are sick when we truly have no ailment. But if we present the symptoms, and believe them, are we not sick anyway? Is a false illness still genuine in some way?. . . I wonder if a person could learn to be aware of when the mind is influencing a bodily reaction, and also when an instinct is overruling the mind.”

An unschooled girl with a good mind. No wonder Jeff liked her.

It’s an odd book, that’s for sure. It crosses so many genres, that alone makes it interesting.

Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster Australia for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted, so quotes may have changed.

For me A Superior Spectre was historical fiction with a touch of science fiction (time travel). As a huge fan of Connie Willis, I started out loving the mix, Leonora’s life in the Scottish Highlands and dirty Edinburgh is beautifully depicted. She is a free spirit, raised by a loving father after the early death of her mother. However her life changes abruptly when her father remarries and she does to live with her aunt in the city.

Jeff is escarping from a dystopian Melbourne to the Scottish Highlands where he plans to end his days. Using a new device he ‘travels’ to Leonora’s 1860s world. His intrusion into her mind, and the crossover of his sexual exploits, see Leonora spiral into madness. Her aunt’s strange behaviour is never fully explained.

The historical fiction is the strongest element of Spectre and what kept me reading. I found Jeff and increasingly unlikeable narrator and his selfish (read entitled) approach to his use to the experimental device grated. Leonora is betrayed by the men in her life, her father, the ‘laird’, and remotely by Jeff.

So the positives are while I didn’t like Jeff, I kept reading and I’m still thinking about the plot and the characters. Highly commended on the historical narrative and Leonora’s story but a little disappointed with the crossover into science fiction. An interesting debut.

“This water is so clear I can lean over and see myself. I am Narcissus, in love with the image of my suffering, fixed in place and soon to drown.”

This book was marketed with a link to the Outlander series and Margaret Atwood’s dystopian feminism. While it does have the same vivid historical setting as Outland, I will say this book leans more to the dystopian side. There is quite a dark and gothic tone to this story.

Jeff has skyrocketed to the top of my most hated characters. He is a self-indulgent and self-absorbed man. It’s evident from the start when he flees Melbourne for the Scottish Highlands to die. He takes percussions so his family will never find him and—unwittingly—leaves his illness as the responsibility of his landlord, Bethea. He spends his time lamenting all the horrible things he’s done, trying to prove he is a changed man while the same time refusing to stop taking the drug that allows him to invade the mind of Leonora. He is despicable but at the same time oddly compelling. At the start of the book, Leonora’s sections were pulling me through the story but as it progressed I was equally invested in both.

I adore Leonora’s section; they were full of lush historical settings and authenticity. We see her struggle to find her voice as she’s pushed away from her family home in the Highlands due to her father’s wishes to remarry. It’s really heartbreaking to see that her firm desire to stay in the Highlands and work on the farm is disregarded, but she heads to Edinburgh to live with her Aunt with the purposes of finding a suitable husband. It’s at this time, Jeff seems to take it upon himself to infuse his own memories and desires with her. It was horrible to see Leonora, this strong-willed girl, struggle under the weight of Jeff’s influence and the strict patriarchal society of the 1860s. She suffers as she’s not allowed to live she wants, be free to set her own future — much like many women in our history.

I loved that Angela Meyer plays with the voice of the novel. At the start, Jeff’s sections are in first person as he’s essentially confessing his sins as a dying man. And Leonora’s sections are in third person. However, as Jeff abuses the drug and causes him to invade Leonora’s mind both are told in first person. It’s beautifully done as they both contain their own voice and you can feel Leonora’s struggle with the oppression.

A Superior Spectre is at times disturbing but wholly engrossing, a cautionary tale of greed and the misuse of science in gothic proportions. Meyer brings a strong voice to the Australian literary scene and I’m excited to see what she does next.

I have really struggled to like this book and finally gave up. I started off fascinated with Leanora, living a simple life in mid-nineteenth century Scotland, and would have happily read on had the story just been about her. Unfortunately modern day Jeff comes across as a selfish jerk and I really couldn’t find anything much appealing about him despite my best efforts. His frequent appearances through the novel, usually at times when I really wanted to see what was going to happen next for Leanora, really spoiled the story for me.

I have received a free copy of this book through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I know a lot of people compared this book to Outlander; its not. t’s a curious blend of science fiction and historical fiction, the resulting story presenting as a cautionary tale with Gothic leanings about the perils of greed and power
In the story we follow Jeff. Jeff is dying. Haunted by memories and grappling with the shame of his desires, he runs away to remote Scotland with a piece of experimental tech that allows him to enter the mind of someone in the past. Instructed to only use it three times, Jeff – self-indulgent, isolated and deteriorating – ignores this advice. I did not like Jeff. At all. You will definitely see why when you read this book.

In the late 1860s, Leonora lives a contented life in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by nature, her hands and mind kept busy. Contemplating her future and the social conventions that bind her, a secret romantic friendship with the local laird is interrupted when her father sends her to stay with her aunt in Edinburgh – an intimidating, sooty city; the place where her mother perished.

A Superior Spectre is a highly accomplished debut novel about our capacity for curiosity, and our dangerous entitlement to it, and reminds us the scariest ghosts aren’t those that go bump in the night, but those that are born and create a place for themselves in the human soul.

3.5 stars overall.

Dark and tragic, A Superior Spectre combines a speculative future with historical fiction. Absolutely stunning.

A mastery of words. I loved this book because it gave me two worlds and I got immersed into them fully. The story was compelling and the characters interesting. Both characters are very interesting to follow for different reasons. One, the historical aspect of the book is great and then we have the science fiction part which is great!
I feel my word can't come close to the emotions that this book gave me. I would totally recommend it.
PS. I normally don't like science fiction but in this instance, it was written perfectly.

The Superior Spectre just wasn’t the book for me. Described as Outlander meets The Handmaid’s Tale, I just couldn’t see any commonalities between texts, except for where the story is located in Scotland (Outlander) and the near future time period (The Handmaid’s Tale). Thus, the story I read was quite unexpected.

I do feel the book touched on controversial subjects (such as sexual orientation, mental illness and the patriarchy) that were worth exploration, but I found the book fell a bit short. For a short read, the book was full of descriptions of many sexual encounters which I found quite odd at times. I do wonder if the story could not have been told in a more poetic manner or whether the subject matter deserved a different story altogether. I do understand that the various elements of science fiction and historical fiction were put together to possibly create something different and interesting but it just didn’t work for me; I found it more muddled than anything else.

I also didn’t like the self-loathing male protagonist due to his selfishness masked in trying to do the right thing—possibly the author intended this? I did like the female protagonist however, but I also found her story quite dreary, like his. In the end I was left hoping for a really twisted ending to make up for the very little I had gained throughout most of the book, but that didn’t happen either for me. I gave the book 2 stars because it takes a lot of gumption to write and have a book published. I also noticed other reviewers loved this book, so I put it down to different personalities and tastes, and that it just wasn’t for me.

This was a wonderful and original book. If you are expecting something similar to The Outlander books, you will be disappointed, however, if you are wanting an original story that will keep you gripped from beginning to end - then this is the book for you.

Told from dual POVs, the author gives the reader the story of Jeff, an Australian who travel to the Scottish highlands to escape his life and his secrets. It is what he does once he is there that makes this story interesting. Due to a special device he has, he is able to transfer his mind to that of another, Lenora, a young woman who lives in the highlands during the 1860s.

Warned to only use the device a maximum of three times, Jeff ignores this warning and freely uses it to escape his own life and live Lenora's. This causes some disastrous results - Lenora begins to think that she is going crazy with some of the things that are happening to her. Her life begins to deteriorate and change in ways that she would never have imagined. There are many dramas, regrets, good and bad choices along the way, some more than likely will make you feel very uncomfortable. There is also some sexual enlightenment that is experienced bringing forth many desires, which are not quite understood.

This was a superb read and I will acknowledge that it will not be to every reader's taste. It was definitely a book that I could not put down.

Read and Reviewed for Reading Is Our Satisfaction

FIVE STARS

I read half of this book but won't be continuing. The story failed to engage and the characters were flat. Obviously the book has received high praise from other reviewers so just a case of it's not my cup of tea.

I was invited to request this book by NetGalley, and despite knowing from the outset that it was more "literary" than my usual, was intrigued by the premise, and saw it already had several 5 star reviews. I found it impossible to classify, so have reluctantly created a "literary fiction" shelf, which seems a waste, since it will have so few books on it. I'm not going to think about my inability to just leave it unclassified... It has sci-fi, historical fiction and erotica elements, is set in a mildly dystopian near future world, and borders on gothic horror at times. Do NOT read this because of the comparisons with Outlander, you would be sorely disappointed, this is definitely not a romance novel.

Jeff, unspecified age, full of self-loathing and dying of an unspecified disease, runs away from his home in Australia, to a remote corner of Scotland, so that his family will not force him to go through the treatment which might prolong his miserably introspective life. A friend has given him an experimental piece of technology, designed as potential entertainment to distract people from the tedium of their lives, which allows the user to enter the mind of someone in the past for a short period of time. Jeff finds himself inside Leonora, a bright young woman from the 1860s Scottish Highlands, who is intrigued by animal biology and quite content living with her widower father. Her peaceful life is shattered when her father remarries, and she is sent first to the nearby town, to work in a hotel, and then, when she gets too close to the handsome young laird, to Edinburgh, to stay with her upwardly socially mobile widowed aunt.
Increasingly aware of someone her mind, and subject to Jeff's lust for teenage boys, Leonora struggles to make her way through the constraints of middle-class Edinburgh society. Jeff tells his story to his android servant, aware of what he is doing to her, but unable to stop, as his guilt eats away at him, like his disease.

In terms of comparisons, to me this is most like Margaret Atwood, bleak and dreamlike in places, but short on details of context. I wanted to know more about Jeff's world - there are hints, but not enough for me. I did not enjoy reading about Jeff's sexual obsessions and memories of both his ill-fated marriage and grubby encounters with his wife's young brother. The frequent literary references mostly went over my head. I did enjoy Leonora's story, and was interested in her meetings with young Edinburgh doctors, including the first female medical students, and the prevailing theories about mental illness.
The writing was fine, it didn't do much for me - I have read better prose recently from crime fiction novelists. Jeff further plummeted in my estimation when he laments that his story could end up being told by a pulp fiction writer, rather than a literary author - as if that's the worst thing that could befall him.

Overall, this was not my cup of tea, but I don't regret reading it, and would recommend it if you like this type of dirty speculative fiction. My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I found the book fascinating but also difficult to read. It wasn't something I could devour in one or two sittings, but had to dip in to for an hour or so at a time - I needed time to think. The premises was interesting but there were too many loose ends - things I wanted to know about and have clarified, but which were left unexplained. If I hadn't read the synopsis it would have taken me a long time to understand what was happening. I couldn't engage with either main characters and in the main felt that neither were changed by their experiences - neither of them grew or learned from what happened to them. I found Jeff less engaging than Leonora - I actually didn't like Jeff much at all - selfish and self-indulgent - but it wasn't his fault as this was how his character was moulded. But then good books do make you think, they are polarising and get talked about. I think A Superior Spectre will be talked about - an excellent, thought-provoking book club book or to share with other literary friends. It's not a book I'll forget in a hurry, and I'm not sure I entirely liked it, but would recommend it strongly to others so they can make up their own minds. A clever book and an amazing debut novel by Angela Meyer - I feel some awards coming along in her future!

A Superior Spectre, by Angela Meyer, is based on a fascinating premise of time travel by haunting.

Leonora is a fabulously strong 1860s character. Raised by her father in the Scottish Highlands after her mother dies in Edinburgh, she wants nothing more than to tend to the animals and crops.

Then the local laird takes an unhealthy interest in her.

Powerless to protect her from what he sees as her impending ruin, Leonora’s father sends her to Edinburgh to stay with her aunt and find an appropriate man to marry.

There’s just one problem: a man from the future is already invading Leonora’s mind for his own entertainment. And he’s slowly driving her mad.

Jeff is a young man who is dying from an unnamed but incurable illness.

But hold your tears: it quickly became clear to me that the only tragedy here is that he’s not dying faster.

Jeff has left behind his family in Melbourne and just vanished – not an easy thing to do when everyone in the future is microchipped and tracked. He wants to die in peace. He doesn’t even leave them a note.

In fact, Jeff is such a downtrodden individual in need of comfort in his final hours that he’s managed to procure an illegal humanoid robot servant to masturbate beside in his remote Scottish hideaway.

He’s also acquired a piece of outlawed technology which allows him to time travel back to the 1860s and hang out in somebody else’s mind. Just for fun. He’s warned not to use it more than 3 times.

But Jeff is a narcissistic prick. So Jeff ignores the instructions and continues to visit Leonora and peer out from behind her eyes to spy on her life.

The effects on Leonora – who believes she is being haunted – are devastating.

You’re clearly supposed to seriously dislike Jeff, so don’t feel bad. He is the embodiment of narcissism and a sneak preview of a fairly hideous future that we can look forward to if we continue down the track of inventing new high-tech toys with little regard for ethics. Just because we can. Just because it will turn a healthy profit.

Jeff’s only redeeming feature is that he is aware of his own multitude of failings. The question you need to ask yourself as a reader is this: can somebody be redeemed if they repent their sins, only to continue repeating them?

The casual feminism in this book is brilliant. In the opening pages, Leonora gives us a detailed but incidental account of her period pain and how she tries to relieve it each month with herbal tea. Meyer goes on to use Leonora’s monthly cycle to give the reader a sense of time passing.

It’s subtle, but it’s there. And why not? Often seasons are used to mark the passing of time, but they only come every 3 months. Menstruation is conveniently monthly.

A Superior Spectre is a brilliantly written feminist tract about a young woman’s simultaneous fight against the 1860s patriarchy and 21st-century narcissism.

Despite Jeff’s revolting presence, it’s well worth reading to the end to find out who wins the fight, and how.

A Superior Spectre is one of those great surprises you’re sometimes lucky enough to find in a first novel—this one is as strong and assured as if it had come from the mind of a seasoned writer at the peak of her powers.

In this book, a dying man by the name of Jeff is struggling with personal demons as he retreats from his home in Melbourne to go hide out in the Scottish Highlands. He wants to escape his past, the urges that both sicken and frighten him, and maybe just himself completely. The thing is, we’re in some kind of future setting where the use of technology has become so all-consuming (I guess it’s not very far from the present) that individuals can do and get away with just about anything they want. Jeff has a droid helper, and though he says he’s always been the type to disdain people who rely too much on tech (as, for instance, in marrying their sex dolls) he starts to use a new device that can send his mind into a random individual from the past. When he’s inside this individual he has no thoughts of his own, he is the person—Leonora, a young woman in the 1860s, living in the Highlands.

Unlike Jeff her life has been fine, but a series of events brings her troubles that threaten to tear her life apart.

There are so many great things about this book: the basic idea wouldn’t be out of place in straight science fiction, and it contains a marvellous philosophical bent. Though a lot happens and A Superior Spectre proves to be a thorough page turner, it’s quite thoughtful in its way. Jeff isn’t the most admirable of characters—he has the same mordant self-disgust one might find in a Michel Houellbecq novel, but this is a strength of Meyer’s story, not a weakness. Leonora has a gentler, kinder disposition but she’s no less fascinating.
Angela Meyer uses description and setting incredibly well; I felt myself transported not only into the lives of these characters but the places (and eras) as well.
Very highly recommended.