In Edith Holler, Edward Carey (The Swallowed Man; Little) spins a dark fairy tale about a precocious girl confined to her family's theater yet driven to reveal the truth behind the disappearance of children in the city she calls home.

At Edith's christening, an actress prophesied that the Holler Theatre in Norwich, England, would crumble if Edith ever stepped outside of it. Twelve-year-old Edith, imprisoned ever since, hasn't minded much: her imagination can take her anywhere. In 1901, she writes a play about the disappearance of children, which she alleges began with Maw Meg, a madwoman of legendary proportions who turns the children into a dubiously edible paste called Beetle Spread. When Edith's widowed father remarries, a fifth time, to Margaret Unthank of the Beetle Spread dynasty, Edith's play--and perhaps her very life--is imperiled.

There's a whiff of the Cinderella story here--with the evil stepmother making the heroine her cleaner--but the novel gradually edges toward horror. Deathwatch beetles and buckets of blood abound; ghosts and giant puppets join the ensemble as Edith travels the Norwich underworld and marshals the missing children to take revenge and preserve the theater against the twin threats of fire and takeover.

The plot may be overstuffed, but Carey pulls off a fantastic finale. Readers will be second-guessing until the final flourish. Driven by a strong central character and a supporting cast of grotesques (brought to life by Carey's black-and-white illustrations), this is reminiscent of Dahl, Dickens, and Shakespeare at their goriest. A wicked delight.

The writing was great, and I do love the sense of character that Edward Carey brings to Edith, but as a story this just fell short for me. It lacked a sense of narrative momentum, which left me feeling restless.

This story follows aspiring playwright Edith Holler, a young girl cursed to live her life within the walls of a Norwich theatre. With fairy tale elements, Edith’s absent father leaves her to deal with her evil stepmother and stepsister, who are heirs to the local beetle spread empire. Quirkiness abounds in this novel with the line between real and imagined constantly rolling like a fog.

This link will take you to an interview with the author: https://www.npr.org/2023/10/28/1209246921/edward-carey-on-his-novel-edith-holler. Edward Carey has a wildly inventive imagination which I encountered first in his novel Little which imagined the childhood of Madame Toussaud. Both strange and entertaining, Edith Holler is a fully fictional character from another age in a very peculiar situation. Highly recommended.

Classic edward carey twisted-ness around a story circling around a brilliant young lady. Hilarious, weird, tim burton odd. So beyond good.

Thank you to NetGalley and Riverhead for allowing me to read this ARC. This is the first Edward Carey book I have read. He does an excellent job of immersing the reader in the story through clear and descriptive prose. I found this a delightfully creepy book--perfectly timed with a October 31 release date. If there is any complaint I have about the book is the overabundance of characters with little to differentiate them. It helps that there was a cast of characters list at the front of the book but I am not sure the large number of characters added much to the story. Still, it is definitely a book worth reading.

I don't even know...this was super weird and creepy. Not my usual kind of book, but it kept me reading to find out what would happen to Edith.

Set in Victorian England (or I guess *right* after the Victorian era ended and just as the Edwardian era began?), Edith is a 12-year-old girl cursed to live in her father's theater for the rest of her life. If she leaves, the theater will fall down and she'll die. But she's fine with that, especially when her father agrees to let her write a play for the actors in the theater to perform. She decides to write her play about Mawther Meg and the children who have been disappearing from the town for hundreds of years. Her theory is, that when Mawther Meg created the beetle spread that everyone loves to eat, that it is not just made of beetles, but also children....

When her father comes home with a new wife one day (a wife who doesn't really like Edith's play at all), her life changes forever...

A perfect autumn tragedy. I enjoyed every one of Carey's drawings interspersed throughout the book. Edith was my underdog who went through so much and deserved so much better. This book felt almost Shakespearean in tone at some points, not complaining at all. Gave me vibes similar to The Whalebone Theater or The Cherry Robbers.

Edith Holler, cursed and confined for life to the theatre where she was born, writes a play uncovering the horrific secrets of Norwich's many disappearing children.

A devoted Edward Carey fan, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on his latest. In this imaginative novel, it’s 1901, Norwich, England, and storyteller and secret keeper, twelve-year-old Edith Holler, a small, sickly child, motherless, is living in her father’s theater. Fueled by her vivid imagination, she’s taken with the revelation that Norwich is famous for its missing children. When she conflates this observation with a delightfully absurd town lore about cursed Meg Utting, known for her beetle spread (that would be cooked beetles that are jarred as jam) is most likely stealing children and making jam out of them, she’s intrigued, scared, and also inspired to write a play from the idea. But thing become unsettling when her widowed father announces that he’s engaged to Margaret, aka beetle-spread Meg. Edith is a delightful protagonist, smarter than the adults around her and Carey’s signature pencil drawings work to further bring to life this enchantingly dark and delicious story. A perfect read for theater lovers and dark humor enthusiasts. Thank you to Riverhead Books for this advanced review copy.

Artistic vision, wit, and the creatively grotesque intermingle in Carey’s (The Swallowed Man, 2020) literary historical fantasy. In 1901, Edith Holler is a physically fragile, curious, motherless 12-year-old who’s lived her entire life within her large family’s historic theater in Norwich, England, because of a supposed curse. A sprightly narrator, Edith is unsurprisingly possessed of an active imagination—too much so, the adults around her believe. After she deduces an unsavory association between Norwich’s lost children and the local delicacy of Beetle Spread (which is exactly what it sounds like), Edith writes a play about this secret history that her stern yet indulgent father agrees to stage. But when widowed Beetle Spread heiress Margaret Unthank becomes her father’s new fiancée, our heroine feels uneasy, and for good reason. Edith’s entertaining tour of the theater’s many nooks and their inhabitants feels somewhat protracted, though the pacing quickens after Margaret appears on the scene. This quirky homage to Carey’s childhood home, which bursts with personality and his expressive pencil drawings (and multiple ghosts), underscores the importance of listening to children.

YA/General Interest: Edith will win over YA readers with her dryly funny observations and determination to outsmart and overcome the wily Margaret.
(Published in Booklist, 9/1/2023)

I am a big Edward Carey fan and my son loved the Lungdon trilogy, Edith Holler is pure Carey and I loved it!
The writing, the location, the characters, imagination, gore, ghosts, theatre, horror, surprises, explosions and a magnificent story.
Ideas and concepts which I could only imagine from Edward Carey, so weird and brilliant, Edith is a wonderful character and I very much enjoyed her story.

So glad we discovered Edward Carey from his book “Little”. This title is going to do big numbers for our library. It appeals to theater, kids, metatext boos, and doodlers of all kinds. Can’t wait to share it. Thank you so much for the ARC.