The reader suspects from the outset what Lizzie does not – that Diner has killed Lucy several years previously and buried her body in nearby woods. Readers of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca will find arresting plot parallels here. When we first meet them, Lizzie sees her husband spying on her in the dark: '…he lay as still as a fox,' she says, 'I would not let him guess that I had seen the glint of his eyeball.' With gloomy weather, the upending of social order in the daily news reports from France, a decaying, disheartening home, and a plot that builds steadily toward a dramatic climax, the recipe for a gripping novel of suspense are complete. Dunmore expertly portrays the tensions and simmering sexual violence in Diner and Lizzie's marriage. Lizzie is still close with her mother and free-thinking stepfather, and she refuses to face up to Diner's controlling nature – at least until a stranger from France begins asking questions about the location of Lucy's grave.īirdcage Walk contains all the elements required in a first-rate gothic novel. But now she finds her marriage faltering as she suspects he may have lied about what happened to his first wife, Lucy. In the face of family opposition Lizzie had married Diner Tredevant, a handsome widower and ambitious entrepreneur, hoping to make his fortune by building and selling a terrace of grand homes. Against this backdrop of world upheaval, in Bristol, England, Lizzie has more intimate worries. It is 1792, and the shockwaves of the brutal revolution in France reverberate around Europe. Questions about this mysterious death, and how it applies to the core of the novel are a compelling hook and establish an atmosphere of mistrust and apprehension that make Birdcage Walk a gripping read.Įventually Dunmore turns to the story's true subject: not Julia Fawkes, but her daughter, Lizzie.

A new chapter takes the reader to 1789 and an atmospheric scene where an unnamed man is burying a dead woman in a forest. Its inscription declares that her words will be her legacy, but the man who finds it has never heard of her and finds little evidence of her writing when he researches her in the following days. The opening prelude is set in contemporary times, with a widower walking his dog and coming upon a headstone dedicated to a long-dead writer, Julia Fawkes.

A tense drama of public and private violence, resistance and terror, Birdcage Walk is the last novel from a beloved author.īirdcage Walk is a historical novel with an unusual beginning.

Birdcage Walk by Helen Dunmore