Dexter Palmer

From the highly acclaimed author of Version Control comes a stunning, powerfully evocative new novel based on a true story--in 1726 in the small town of Godalming, England, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to dead rabbits. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, a local surgeon realizes that nothing in his experience as a village physician has prepared him to deal with a situation as disturbing as this.this.

A Novel

Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen

In 1726, in the town of Godalming, England, a woman confounded the nation's medical community by giving birth to seventeen rabbits. This astonishing true story is the basis for Dexter Palmer's stunning, powerfully evocative new novel. Surgeon's apprentice Zachary Walsh knows that his master, John Howard, prides himself on his rationality. But John cannot explain how or why Mary Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event be­comes a regular occurrence, John and Zach­ary realize that nothing in their experience as rural physicians has prepared them to deal with a situation like this--strange, troubling, and possibly miraculous. John contacts sev­eral of London's finest surgeons, three of whom soon arrive in Godalming to observe, argue, and perhaps use the case to cultivate their own fame. When King George I learns of Mary's plight, she and her doctors are summoned to London, where Zachary experiences a world far removed from his small-town ex­istence and is exposed to some of the dark­est corners of the human soul. All the while Mary lies in bed, as doubts begin to blossom among her caretakers and a growing group of onlookers waits with impatience for an­other birth, another miracle.

Nica

"We have long since lost any curiosity about ourselves, having lived in this body for our whole lives," said Grace, "but there is still profit to be had from the curiosity of others."

who can condemn a person for deceiving others who were so willing to deceive themselves? Which of us does not have a devil that lives inside of us, whispering not what is true, but what we wish to believe, out of innocence or cupidity or a hundred other reasons? We must stay ever vigilant against that demon, ever on watch against his pleasing music

despite his presumed omnipresence he often arrives in the company of men; that men fear to interpret the world on their own authority when they are aware of his presence, because his senses are complete and perfect and his experiences are unlimited; that the standards for proof are much higher when God is involved, especially proof of life, or of what goes on inside a woman’s body; that weighed against God’s displeasure, or against a man’s feeling that God is displeased by his actions, the life of one woman is no great thing.

history is an act of continuous collective imagining, and the perception of truth is a constant, unending negotiation, with others, and with oneself when one is alone

I do wonder if the God who watched my actions, who sees all and knows all, had the same perception of the world as I did

what matter is the unproven nature of an assertion if enough people became convinced of its truth?

though it takes a strange path. The Lord made us in his own image. It is also true that he made us creatures of reason—our minds are what differentiate us from the animals. Therefore the Lord must also be a being of reason, yes? Which means the Lord's actions might be inscrutable to us, we being not as wise as him, but they could not be senseless. If this is a miracle, then it is a strange one, for, if its cause is truly unfathomable, if its sole purpose is to affirm God's existence and force us to admit our ignorance and powerless before him, then the only course of action remaining to us is to abdicate the exercise of our reason, and abandon our attempts to comprehend it. Which would involve going against our very nature, as God created us. Which would, in turn, involve going against God's nature.

"As inscrutable as the Lord might be to us, what God would ask such a thing? To deny the very feature of our being that makes us what we are, that makes us what he is? For what reason?

"There must be a how to this, Zachary. Even if we cannot perceive it with what we presently know, we must continue to try. We are less than men if we believe otherwise."

"Cities are complicated," said John. "They can be both the beautiful thing you believed them to be and the dark thing you did not imagine they could be. The one does not obscure the other."

What would it be like to be seen as a signal of the strange if one was not strange to oneself?

If you started to see that worms lurked behind the eyes of everyone you saw, it was only reasonable to deduce that they'd made a home behind your own, living in their little tunnels in the mind, silently altering what you see and how you see it.

drinking gin was like having a story told to one's tongue, with flavors in the place of words

gin was a means to an end, not an end in intself

I GAVE YOU A RARE GIFT, AND YOU DIDNT WANT IT,, HANNIBAL MENTIONEDDDD

he'd found that he'd wasted something rare

he felt a stab of shame at having wasted a gift that he had failed to recognize as one

"It's patently ridiculous. Never a shortage of fools in this world: one falls victim to his own idiocy and two more come to take his place."

she realized that here, in the midst of this group of people standing vigil, was a place of wonder; in a place where anything could be true, anyone could be a writer of history, rather than a mere reader.

She was not a victim, for being a victim entails activities and duties that she felt no obligation to perform. It means that people who come across you in the street will look at you with pity in their eyes, and smug thankfulness in their own good fortune will lie behind their pity. In the moment they will conveniently forget  their own secret tragedies; they will not realize that they are no more fortunate than you are, that calamity comes for every one of us, and assumes the shape that will be sure to hurt us most.

he thought that perhaps if he pretended love, then love would return

Perhaps they could sense that, in a room within the bagnio, the fabric of reality was slowly turning from cloth to lace, and so they found themselves drawn to a place where the truth was mutable; where, if you pushed at facts, they would kindly move aside for you instead of pushing back. Their dreams and wishes were small, perhaps, and usually meant for themselves alone, but a thousand such contrary-to-fact imaginings, working in quiet concert, might bring about a new philosophy, or a new nation.

That was another test passed, but when would his life become anything more than a seemingly never-ending series of unexpectedly sprung trials? Perhaps never—perhaps every day carried its little challenges of intellect and character, until the last respite of one’s deathbed.

A man with enough imagination could keep himself forever entertained by staring out of a window, as stories yielded other stories and none of them ever reached its end. But that man would starve, unless he could somehow feed himself on dreams and digressions.

the city was best thought of a single living thing with its own unique anatomy, then the Port of London was its enormous mouth, the enabler of its gluttony. Merchandise from a dozen countries fell into its maw, and the lighters might be seen as agents of digestion, sorting the various goods and delivering them to the places where they could best satisfy the city’s need for nutrition

Though you have your own thoughts and desires, once you become a part of the city you may find that it bends you to its will, that it makes you have thoughts and aspirations that you will believe are your own, but are in fact the city's as it sings to itself. I tell you, it leaves and breathes and it has its own cycles.

Do you know what carrying a child inside you does to your idea of space, of what you own? Even the poorest man takes for granted that he holds clear title to the space inside his skin. Oh, but ask a man about a woman, and he’ll tell you that her body is so very different from his, that it holds empty spaces that stretch and hold mysteries, that measure time with strange and bloody clocks—whose empty spaces are those? Who holds their precious title? Ask a man again, and he’ll argue that the case is not so simple when the sex is switched. The mere pockets of air inside men that erupt in belches and farts are of little account, but the spaces inside women are meant by God for so much more that women’s ownership of them is clearly only ever provisional. Those empty spaces cannot be left unoccupied for no reason—they are intended to be penetrated, colonized, stuffed to bursting. The rule of men: all spaces must be filled. 

men have seen me as a vessel meant only for making smaller versions of themselves

Charmaine

Crafted of one peculiar hoax with miracles in between and philosophy on human nature itself. A rabbit queen, indeed.

Narah Quinn

I will be releasing a full review of this (in line with the publisher requests) in the future. 

What I will say is that if you enjoy historical fiction books, and things a little strange and wonderful. this book does not disappoint! 

Definitely give it a read!

Mary Toft; Or, the Rabbit Queen A Novel

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