Edith Holler

Starred review from August 28, 2023
Carey (Little) draws on fairy tales and Shakespeare for a dazzling bildungsroman. In 1901 Norwich, 12-year-old Edith Holler lives in her family’s dilapidated theater, where she fills her days reading books on the city’s past. From them she learns that hundreds of children have inexplicably died or vanished from Norwich over the centuries. She can’t say for sure, but she thinks they’ve been murdered, their bodies used to flavor Beetle Spread, a popular local delicacy invented by a 14th-century woman named Meg Uttig. Even the eccentric theatrical troupe that serves as Edith’s surrogate family would find her claim hard to swallow, so she decides to share her knowledge by writing a play, inspired by Hamlet, to reveal the crime through drama. In the run-up to its production, her father, Edgar, marries Margaret Uttig Unthank, the heir to the Beetle Spread fortune. Margaret promptly turns Edgar against Edith and burns all copies of her play. Edith, realizing Margaret will do anything to hide Beetle Spread’s secret, flees from the theater’s basement into subterranean Norwich, where she rewrites her play among the ghosts of the murdered children who roam the city’s bowels. Edith says her theatrical friends “strive to make the impossible possible” to “convince our public of fantastical personages and happenings.” On these grounds, Carey unquestionably succeeds. This affirms the author’s standing as a major literary talent.