At first the contrast between the two halves, one set in the then-present, one in Victorian times, seems stark: highlighted by the difference in tone, the opening section has a slightly pulpy, fluffy feel, while the section that follows is far more serious and sombre. Melanie lives in a meticulously-restored house in a newly-gentrified part of London, made possible by her husband’s successful career. She’s carefully tended to and, Laski makes it clear, considered deserving of attention because she’s young and pretty. Milly however, who’s resting on the same chaise-longue is confined to a stuffy sitting-room in a dreary, cluttered house, overseen by her stern sister who’s clearly obsessed with the ways in which Milly has somehow transgressed. However, as Laski’s narrative unfolds it’s evident Melanie and Milly are both in cages, it’s just that Melanie’s is more luxurious. A fairly weird novella from the 1950s. Melanie, a young woman in early 50s London, visits an antique shop where she feels strangely drawn to an ugly Victorian chaise-longue. I said to Guy, it can’t be right, we can’t be meant to endure such bliss, and he was nearly asleep, and he laughed and said I was a puritan at heart.” La parte che colpisce di più, comunque, non è tanto lo scambio di corpi (che ugualmente interessante perchè Melanie si ritrova circondata da persone a dir poco inquietanti e bizzarre) ma le riflessioni ed implicazioni per ciò che sta succedendo.

This article has been written for us by an old friend of The Victorian Emporium, Claire Platten, who is a fabulous upholsterer based in East London. Duchesse brisée (Broken duchess in French): this word is used when the chaise longue is divided in two parts: the chair and a long footstool, or two chairs with a stool in between them. The origin of the name is unknown.

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Without full control of her own mind, and being told she is not who she thinks she is, Melanie's sense of identity is even more lost than when she was just a helpless patient.

For the rest of what I think about this book, I'll link to my reading journal. Sometimes for what I want to say, this little box here where I'm supposed to post my thoughts just isn't the right venue. Don't worry - there's not much in the way of spoilers there. I love restoring antiques, using some of the fantastic modern fabrics now on the market. Mixing old and new. Creating an original, one-off piece of furniture.This article will give you an idea of the process of re-upholstery; it’s not a step-by-step instruction manual. Traditional upholstery is a craft that takes years to master. Originally, it was a 5 year full time apprentiship. Now there are many short and long courses. But it still takes years of study and years of work experience before you are a confident, established upholsterer. How do you restore a Chaise Longue?

Is 1950s Melanie some sort of reincarnation of Millie? This is perhaps a surprising theme for the author, who was apparently an avowed atheist. There was a lot of show wood on this Chaise, so the fabric had to be fixed to the indented area just before the show wood.

Méridienne:You’re probably most familiar with the méridienne style of chaise longue. a méridienne has a high head-rest, and a lower foot-rest, joined by a sloping piece. Whether or not they have anything at the foot end, méridiennes are asymmetrical day-beds. They were popular in the grand houses of France in the early 19th century. Its name is from its typical use: rest in the middle of the day, when the sun is near the meridian. Sounds mysterious? Well, it isn't. It's just that the plot is one thing if you read it with the expectation that everything in the book happens just as it is described. If, however, you begin to doubt the narrator, you may start to wonder what is really going on. Dijo: Quizás Milly Baines murió aquí. Entonces, sin duda Milly Baines está muerta, dijo sin emoción, Milly y Adelaide y Lizzie, todas muertas y podridas hace rato. Este cuerpo que habito debe haberse podrido inmundamente, esta funda de almohada debe de ser un pedazo de trapo, esta colcha debe de estar apolillada, crujiente y pegajosa por los huevos de las polillas, cayéndose a pedazos mugrientos. Todo está muerto y podrido, el jugo de cebada contaminado, el camisón raído y tirado, estas manos, este cuerpo entero pestilente, podrido, muerto. Se estremeció y supo que se estremecía en un cuerpo muerto hacía mucho tiempo. Se le puso la piel de gallina, y era una piel que se había puesto verde y licuefacta y se había convertido en polvo húmedo junto con la húmeda madera pútrida del ataúd. This is the story of a young married, pregnant woman named Melanie in the 1950s with TB. She goes to sleep on a Victorian chaise longue and wakes up in 1864, an unmarried young woman named Millie who had incurable TB and a shameful secret. In her efforts to prove who she is, her identity becomes more and more linked to the past. Will she ever be able to return? Just who is she, really? Millie or Melanie? Is there a difference? Is it a nightmare, time travel, madness or altered state, or (as she eventually wonders), some sort of test from Fate, Providence, or God?

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I actually don't say this too often, but I think this his book would've benefited from a more rigorous editing process. The second half was actually quite good, and there were ideas and moments in here with great potential, but in general I found the book largely disappointing and even cringeworthy at points. there was only her body’s need to lie on the Victorian chaise-longue, that, and an overwhelming assurance, or was it a memory, of another body that painfully crushed hers into the berlin-wool.” Increasingly, Melanie questions her sanity, as her thoughts and words seem to become less and less her own, with "no control over the words that came... they were alien words and phrases, yet no more deliberately chosen than any words one ordinarily chooses." Laski was born to a prominent family of Jewish intellectuals: Neville Laski was her father, Moses Gaster her grandfather, and socialist thinker Harold Laski her uncle. She was educated at Lady Barn House School and St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith. After a stint in fashion, she read English at Oxford, then married publisher John Howard, and worked in journalism. She began writing once her son and daughter were born.