Opium and Absinthe
Lydia Kang
Lake Union Publishing
2020
Ms. Hen read this because she leaned that it was about vampires, and she is into vampires right now. She knew nothing about the author at first, but Ms. Hen found out that she is a physician. She thinks the cover of the book is beautiful, and was intrigued by the story.
This novel is about a young woman in 1899 New York, Tillie Pembroke, whose sister dies, and right before that she is in a horse accident and she breaks her clavicle. Tillie is in a lot of pain, so she goes to the doctor, and is prescribed laudanum, which is type of opium, and she becomes addicted to it, and it affects her senses. Her sister Lucy is found murdered, with two puncture marks at her throat and a bottle of absinthe next to her.
Tillie, determined to find out who killed her sister, goes on a quest to find the murderer. She lives in the house with her mother and her grandmother, and they decide to keep a tight reign on her after her sister’s death. Tillie’s family has a lot of money, and they live in the stylish section of New York. Tillie manages to sneak out of the house and find assistance from Ian, a young man who sells newspapers, or as they are called, a newsie.
Tillie is adventurous and is not afraid to try to uncover the circumstances surround Lucy’s death. She has always been a person who is interested in learning, she reads the dictionary, and she likes to find out information about the world around her. Living in that era, it would be difficult for a young woman to be like that because women weren’t supposed to be curious, the point of their lives was to find a husband, get married and have children.
When Ms. Hen started reading this, she thought it would actually be about vampires. There is a lot of mention of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA, because the novel takes place in the year that came out, and the murders that occur look like vampire killings. But no vampires actually appear, and Ms. Hen was disappointed. This is more of a historical gothic mystery than a vampire novel, which Ms. Hen is fine with when she realized that was the case. It’s a nice novel about a young woman finding herself and trying to solve the mystery of her sister’s death. It’s also a female empowerment novel, because Tillie does not take any garbage from anyone, she wants to do what she wants in life, and Ms. Hen doesn’t think there is anything that will stop her.
There is some talk in this novel about the coming new millennium, which Ms. Hen was confused about, but then she realized that was considered 1900 or the twentieth century. Ms. Hen thinks it’s interesting that people now think this century is the new millennium, but it was actually in 1900. Ms. Hen did some research about this, and found this article:
Sometimes things aren’t what you expect them to be. This article talks about the technological advances in the nineteenth century, but just in the past thirty years there have been so many changes in the world, that Ms. Hen can’t keep up.
Ms. Hen liked this book, even though it wasn’t what she expected it to be. She kept waiting for the vampires and they never showed up. But that happens with lots of things in life, you want something to come, and it never does, but we deal with things anyways, and keep going on.
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