C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7 , 2019
John Ruskin. Iris befriends an adorable little
pickpocket straight from the imagination of
Charles Dickens — and there’s Dickens
himself, railing in the newspaper against the
Pre-Raphaelites. It’s all part of the
trompe-l’oeil effect of Macneal’s magical sto-
rytelling, which enables real and fictional
characters to step together right off the page.
This exuberant re-creation of London is
fascinating, but it wasn’t Macneal’s feminist
critique of the Pre-Raphaelites’ aesthetics that
almost made me miss a flight to California.
Credit for that goes to a taxidermist named
Silas, whose story slithers along underneath
the tale of Iris’s liberation. Silas sells preserved
birds and mice to London artists while imag-
ining that someday his little menagerie of
curious creatures will earn the respect of
England’s greatest scientists. Naturally, his
shop is full of stuffed and pickled specimens,
which doesn’t seem alarming in and of itself,
except that “he likes to talk to his creatures,”
Macneal writes, “to make up histories that
have landed them on his slab,” And the stiff
little mice on a shelf next to his bed are dressed
in tiny costumes. So cute!
But that charming idiosyncrasy is only the
first of his peculiarities. He’s stuffed tight with
delusions of grandeur and fetid grievances.
The longing he still feels for the lost girl of his
youth initially calls forth our sympathy — and
then something very different. Like some
classic Edgar Allan Poe character, his perfectly
reasonable introduction gradually simmers to
a full-on boil of criminal insanity. When he
sets his sights on Iris, she has no idea that he’s
been constructing in his imagination a whole
diorama of their romance — a tableau he’ll
pursue with alarming vigor.
All this gothic horror is drawn in deliciously
lurid tones, but what’s even more satisfying is
how effectively Macneal integrates the dispa-
rate elements of her story. Having escaped the
doll shop to model for the Pre-Raphaelites, Iris
discovers that she has exchanged painting
dolls for being one. For all their progressive
ideals about sexual freedom, these young
artists seem determined to keep imagining
beautiful women imprisoned, drowned and
immobilized in their paintings. They o ffer, in a
sense, only a more elegant presentation of the
stuffed and mounted animals that Silas sells.
Whether Iris can find the courage and the
language to critique the Pre-Raphaelites’ work
provides the novel with an unusual element of
intellectual suspense. But what Iris experi-
ences with her admiring taxidermist seems to
arise from a much earlier artist: Hieronymus
Bosch. And that story is one hell of a trip.
[email protected]Ro n Charles writes about books for The
Washington Post and hosts
To tallyHipVideoBookReview.com.Her “exquisite disgrace” may seem like a
modern feminist parable dressed up in period
costume, but Iris’s predicament and her suc-
cess are inspired by the real-life story of Lizzie
Siddal, who famously posed for John Everett
Millais’s “Ophelia” and later married Rossetti.
In fact, Siddal makes a brief appearance in
these chapters, too.
Macneal is a sticky-fingered artist, lifting
figures she needs from history and art. You’ll
catch a touch of “Jane Eyre” and read a bit offamiliarity of her previous life, because this
expansive liberty seems like it will engulf her.”
But this new liberty is compromised in
ways that Iris will soon comprehend. What
develops is a fascinating portrait of a talented
young woman trying to negotiate the impossi-
ble sexual standards of her era: To acquire the
skills she needs, Iris must endure society’s
approbation, and to enjoy the romance she
craves, she must keep her talent subordinate
to her lover’s.BY RON CHARLESI’ve missed subway stops to finish a book,
but this is the first time I almost missed a
plane. The final chapters of Elizabeth
Macneal’s delightfully creepy novel kept me
screwed to my office chair as my wife sent
irritated texts from the airport.
What more could one
want from a Victorian
thriller?
But Macneal delivers
even more. “The Doll Facto-
ry,” which is already a hit in
England, offers an eerily
lifelike re-creation of 1850s
London laced with a smart
feminist critique of Western
aesthetics. It’s a perfect
blend of froth and sub-
stance, a guilty pleasure
wrapped around a provoca-
tive history lesson.
The whole story takes
place at a time of exhilarat-
ing discovery and inven-
tion. All of London — from
royals to street urchins — is
awed by the construction of the Crystal Palace
in Hyde Park, “a turning kaleidoscope” where
the wonders of the world have been assem-
bled. Advances in industrial technology mir-
ror equally revolutionary changes in social
attitudes.
One of the many people enthralled by the
Great Exhibition is an ambitious young wom-
an named Iris. But the future that stretches
out before her is mired in dismal servitude.
Iris is stuck painting little faces in a dank doll
shop owned by a mad old woman. Only her
secret nude painting late at night offers her
any momentary thrill.
And so Iris might have stayed, feeling illicit
and smothered, had she not caught the eye of
several young men about town. Macneal
deftly paints her fictional heroine into the
colorful lives of the Pre-Raphaelite Brother-
hood, those radical reformers, including
Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who strove to reinvig-
orate the arts. They strut through these pages
radiating all their brash brilliance, fragile
enthusiasms and comic eccentricities (includ-
ing their fondness for wombats). When they
spot Iris sitting in her doll shop, one of them —
a fictional member of the Brotherhood named
Louis Frost — knows instantly that she must
model for him. Though it’s a scandalous career
move, just a shade away f rom prostitution, Iris
defies her family and runs off to sit for Frost.
Her only condition: He must teach her to
paint.
“Her life was a cell before, but now the
freedom terrifies her,” Macneal writes. “There
are times when she longs for the enclosedbook world
Literary Calendar
FRIDAY | 7 P.M. Richard Russo will read
from his novel “Chances Are.. .,” about
three college friends who reflect on a
fateful day in 19 71 , at Politics and Prose,
5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. 202-364-1919.BY ANGELA HAUPTTo p ut a literary spin on an adage: If you
read a book but don’t post about it on
social media, did you really read it?
On Bookstagram, a niche corner of
Instagram, readers share dazzling photos
of single b ooks, stacks of b ooks, coffee and
books, nature and books. Books that nev-
er looked so good. And on YouTube’s
BookTube, bibliophiles upload vlogs, or
video logs, anywhere from a couple min-
utes to more than an hour long. Some
BookTubers specialize in spirited re-
views; there’s an account that posts live-
action illustrations of C.S. Lewis essays,
and another that analyzes the classics in
gangster-speak.
In t hese sprawling but welcoming com-
munities, readers have found one an-
other, banding together in a global, aes-
thetically pleasing book club that’s open
for discussion 24/7. More than 33 million
Instagram posts are tagged “#booksta-
gram,” and BookTube videos can amass
millions of views — luring publishers and
authors who actively court the most pop-
ular accounts. We asked three ’grammers
and ’tubers — otherwise known as book
influencers — to describe their experi-
ences in these online communities that
are so warm, they feel like social media’s
best.
Name: Jamise Harper, 50, Washington
Follower count: 9 ,000
Where to find her: @spinesvines on
Instagram
Moments after Harper popped into a
Baltimore bookstore last summer, she
was greeted by an enthusiastic patron:
“‘Oh my g osh, a re you Spines and Vines?’ ”
she r ecalls a woman g ushing. “A nd my s on
was like, ‘You’re famous!’ ”
Harper is, indeed, Spines and Vines.
She joined Bookstagram and adopted the
moniker in 2015, an ode to her two loves:
books and wine. Her near-daily photos
are colorful — stacks of brightly hued
books next to a glass of her favorite vino,
usually r osé, or paired w ith gooey s’mores
or chicken nachos. Many o f the photos are
accompanied by reviews: five wineglass
emoji for “Miracle Creek” by Angie Kim;
four for Ta yari Jones’s “Silver Sparrow.”
From the beginning, Harper focused on
reading books b y women, and in 2018, she
created the #diversespines initiative — a
hashtag that’s been used nearly 10,000
times to indicate a book by a woman of
color. “It blew up quickly,” s he says. “I had
booksellers telling me they follow the
hashtag to know what people are reading
and w hat to stock, a nd so many people say
they use it as a resource to pick out what
they’re going to read next.”
The online community has led to real-
life community: Harper co-founded a
popular monthly D.C. book club with
fellow Bookstagrammer Lupita Aquino
(@Lupita.Reads), and she recently
launched a quarterly dinner meetup at a
local bookstore. “You have the same com-
mon love for something, and that binds
you together,” s he says of the friends she’s
made. “I think it’s remarkable.”Name: Cindy Pham, 24, Norfolk
Follower count: 3 3,500
Where to find her: @readwithcindy on
YouTube
In a recent 35-minute video, Pham
blasted one of her summer reads as “stu-
pid... and neurotic ramblings,” praised
another as “the book version of comfort
food” and analyzed literary fiction as a
genre.
The funny, fast-talking book lover
launched her YouTube channel, Read
With Cindy, a year ago. She posts a new
video about once a week, ranging from
in-depth reviews to satiric rants on book
culture.
Pham assigns each title she discusses a
rating of 1 to 5 — and given t hat her videos
collect more than 10,000 views, she takes
those scores seriously. “When I started,
my intention was just doing commentary
and m aking stupid jokes about the books I
was reading,” s he says. But as her follow-
ing grew, m any readers told her they used
her analysis to decide what to read next.
“So I started reading more critically, and
now it’s become a balance of humor and
critical thoughts.”
Pham’s videos attract an international
audience; during a recent trip to Portugal,
she a rranged to meet a handful of readers
who subscribe to her videos. Before
launching h er B ookTube channel, s he had
made only a few videos, mostly for school.
It’s a low-budget endeavor, Pham says: “I
just sit in front of a white wall and prop
my phone on a stack of boxes” — creating
the intimate feeling that you’re lounging
in the living room w ith her, talking books.Name: Jordan Moblo, 35, Los Angeles
Follower count: 2 1,500
Where to find him: @jordys.book.club
on Instagram
There’s a popular Instagram hashtag
called #bookstagrammademedoit: If you
don’t speak hashtag, that’s “ bookstagram
made me do it,” or a title one never would
have selected i f not for b eing flooded with
gorgeous pictures of its cover. For Moblo,
that’s one of the joys of Bookstagram. He
once shrugged off John Boyne’s “The
Heart’s Invisible Furies,” but then it be-
came one of his favorite books — all
because, you know, Bookstagram made
him do it.
Moblo joined Bookstagram a year ago,
after a book-filled vacation inspired him
to track his reads. At the time, he was
logging seven or eight books a year. Now,
he’s c ompleting t hree to five a week; at t he
end of June, his count for the year was 81.
On a recent Tuesday, 24 hours before
heading to Africa for his honeymoon,
Moblo had packed 13 books and lamented
that Bookstagram has thoroughly compli-
cated his luggage situation.
African scenery aside, most of Moblo’s
photos land in three groups: flat lays
(plants, coffee and groups of books, taken
from above); stacks showing off the titles’
spines; and a single book on a neutral
surface, always accompanied by a review,
along with a list of similar books or
read-this-instead suggestions.
Bookstagram, Moblo says, has become
his favorite creative outlet. “It’s very
quirky — you find there are all these little
worlds,” he says. “I’m finding new books, I
feel like I’m getting an education in au-
thors I wouldn’t normally read, and I’m
making friends I stay in touch with on a
daily basis. There are so many ways of
using this to your advantage.”
[email protected]An gela Haupt is a freelance writer and full-
time health editor in the District.The Bookstagrammers and BookTubers changing the way people read
WASHINGTON POST ILLUSTRATION/LIBRARY OF CONGRESSIf you’re new to YouTube’s BookTube, a community of readers who make videos
about books, get started with these 10 channels.HarperCollins’s Book Studio 16The publishing house shares short interviews with authors, as well as cover reveals
and book trailers.C.S. Lewis DoodleThese creative, compelling animated illustrations are designed to promote better
understanding of Lewis’s works, such as “The Abolition of Man.”Brown Girl ReadingThoughtful discussions with Diana Evans, mostly on books by diverse authors, such
as Judith Guest’s “Ordinary People.”PolandbananasBOOKSBookTube hall-of-famer Christine Riccio, who has more than 400,000 subscribers,
posts a couple of chatty, amusing videos each week — including reviews, book-
tailored yoga poses and a newbie’s guide to fantasy and sci-fi.Wisecrack’s Thug NotesSix seasons of hilarious summaries of the classics in gangster-speak, paired with
thoughtful analysis.Penguin Random House’s Read It ForwardPopular authors — Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Amber Tamblyn — share what they’re
reading; plus six monthly recommendations around a theme, such as foodie books,
and 20-minute “book club discussion” chats.SavidgeReadsCharming U.K. reader Simon Savidge delves into literary fiction; look for cameos by
authors, other BookTubers and his endearing “mum.”Crash Course LiteratureVlogger and author brothers Hank and John Green teach a variety of topics,
including a terrific series on literature: fun, classroom-ready lessons on “Pride and
Prejudice,” “The Great Gatsby” and dozens of other titles.Snazzy ReadsReviews and recommendations from a 10-year-old “dapper dude” — a prolific reader
who’s interested in both kid lit and more advanced titles.HarperCollins’s Epic ReadsThis YA-centric community shares weekly “book nerd problem” videos, plus author
interviews, book trailers and suggestions for culturally diverse contemporary YA
books.
— Angela Haupt10 BookTube channels worth checking out
Part history, part thriller: A model for all to follow
THE DOLL
FACTORY
By Elizabeth
Macneal
Atria/Emily
Bestler. 362 pp.
$27