Name: CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON.
Rating: 3.779411764705882 (34 reviews)
ISBN: 9780241349205

SARA. COLLINS

CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON.

Sara Collins

“A stunning debut. . . . I love this book.” -Guardian A servant and former slave is accused of murdering her employer and his wife in this astonishing historical thriller that moves from a Jamaican sugar plantation to the fetid streets of Georgian London—a remarkable literary debut with echoes of Alias Grace, The Underground Railroad, and The Paying Guests. All of London is abuzz with the scandalous case of Frannie Langton, accused of the brutal double murder of her employers, renowned scientist George Benham and his eccentric French wife, Marguerite. Crowds pack the courtroom, eagerly following every twist, while the newspapers print lurid theories about the killings and the mysterious woman being tried at the Old Bailey. The testimonies against Frannie are damning. She is a seductress, a witch, a master manipulator, a whore. But Frannie claims she cannot recall what happened that fateful evening, even if remembering could save her life. She doesn’t know how she came to be covered in the victims’ blood. But she does have a tale to tell: a story of her childhood on a Jamaican plantation, her apprenticeship under a debauched scientist who stretched all bounds of ethics, and the events that brought her into the Benhams’ London home—and into a passionate and forbidden relationship. Though her testimony may seal her conviction, the truth will unmask the perpetrators of crimes far beyond murder and indict the whole of English society itself. The Confessions of Frannie Langton is a breathtaking debut: a murder mystery that travels across the Atlantic and through the darkest channels of history. A brilliant, searing depiction of race, class, and oppression that penetrates the skin and sears the soul, it is the story of a woman of her own making in a world that would see her unmade.

A Novel

The Confessions of Frannie Langton

Bambi Ard

3 or 3.5

I don’t fully understand the point of this book— I think I went in expecting one thing and was a bit disappointed when I got another, but that’s more on me, I suppose.

I probably would have given this 4 stars if not for my problems with the writing at times. It could get very flowery, and while all the similes, metaphors, and turns of phrases were beautifully written, it was just too crowded. Less can be more. There were also instances where I’d be reading, realize something happened, and then have to go back a paragraph or two to reread what happened because it was written so oddly/abstractly that I didn’t catch it the first time. 

Overall a really engrossing story, I can’t say I was ever bored.

erin s

Frances, aka Frannie, is on trial for the murder of her master and mistress. A former enslaved person on a Jamaican sugar plantation, she was given to her former owner’s business partner (and intellectual rival) as a maidservant years earlier. Passed between these cruel men and forced to inscribe their dictated treatises on phrenology and other hateful race science, Frannie seeks comfort in her employer George’s wife. Marguerite and Frannie soon develop an intimate relationship, albeit one fraught with power dynamics and manipulation. Though she was found asleep and covered in blood next to the dead Marguerite and a floor away from George’s corpse, she maintains her innocence in the courtroom, blaming amnesia for her suspicious proximity to her murdered employers. Her entire story unfolds in the form of a written testament for her lawyer, where she pieces together her part in the murders and her place in the early British Empire.

This was a pretty disturbing read for a variety of reasons. It was beautifully written and thoroughly researched, and Sara Collins evocatively rendered the unforgiving Jamaican heat and the oppressive chill of London. I found Frannie and Marguerite's relationship to be abusive and creepy, especially when factoring in Marguerite's fondness for a former Black servant she employed years earlier. There was an element of exploitative exotification to her fixation on Frannie, and it was difficult to read Frannie's enthusiastic admiration for her unstable and not entirely innocent madame. The plantation owner, Langton, is repulsive, and his abusive hold over Frannie both in Jamaica and after abandoning her in England was evident in its traumatizing impact.

In the end, I didn't love this book, but I did appreciate Collins' centering of a queer Black woman in a subgenre (murderesses/criminal women in historical fiction) with mostly white women protagonists. Frannie is a really interesting narrator, and I wish some of the plot points had lived up to my expectations. Overall, well-written and understandably disturbing, but a bit meandering at times.

'Deep-diving and elegant . . . Wide Sargasso Sea meets Beloved meets Alias Grace' Margaret Atwood THE 'DAZZLINGLY ORIGINAL' DEBUT NOVEL BY A NEW LITERARY STAR 'They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done?' 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth. For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed. But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? A beautiful and haunting tale about one woman's fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night back alleys, into the enthralling heart of Georgian London. 'A dazzling page-turner' Emma Donoghue 'A star in the making' Sunday Times 'Gothic fiction made brand new' Stef Penney 'Stunning' Guardian 'Spectacular' Natasha Pulley 'Dazzlingly original' The Times 'A heroine for our times' Elizabeth Day

Leila

Cara Stegemann

Lila R E

Barbara

Rebecca Raven

'Deep-diving and elegant . . . Wide Sargasso Sea meets Beloved meets Alias Grace' Margaret Atwood 'Sara Collins takes the gothic genre by the scruff of the neck...a triumph of powerful characterisation melded with suspenseful plotting' Bernadine Evaristo THE 'DAZZLINGLY ORIGINAL' DEBUT NOVEL BY A NEW LITERARY STAR SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARDS FIRST NOVEL PRIZE 2019 'They say I must be put to death for what happened to Madame, and they want me to confess. But how can I confess what I don't believe I've done?' 1826, and all of London is in a frenzy. Crowds gather at the gates of the Old Bailey to watch as Frannie Langton, maid to Mr and Mrs Benham, goes on trial for their murder. The testimonies against her are damning - slave, whore, seductress. And they may be the truth. But they are not the whole truth. For the first time Frannie must tell her story. It begins with a girl learning to read on a plantation in Jamaica, and it ends in a grand house in London, where a beautiful woman waits to be freed. But through her fevered confessions, one burning question haunts Frannie Langton: could she have murdered the only person she ever loved? A WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE MONTH A beautiful and haunting tale about one woman's fight to tell her story, The Confessions of Frannie Langton leads you through laudanum-laced dressing rooms and dark-as-night back alleys, into the enthralling heart of Georgian London. 'A dazzling page-turner' Emma Donoghue 'A star in the making' Sunday Times 'Gothic fiction made brand new' Stef Penney 'Stunning' Guardian 'Spectacular' Natasha Pulley 'Dazzlingly original' The Times 'A heroine for our times' Elizabeth Day

CONFESSIONS OF FRANNIE LANGTON.

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