Newes from the Dead

Based on a true story, this tale of a young girl who somehow survived death after being publicly hanged on a trumped up charge of infanticide never lets up for a moment. Once again Mary Hooper writes in a style not strictly speaking of its time yet still sufficiently different from how we speak now to lend extra authenticity to her narrator Anne Green, a menial servant working in one of the big houses in seventeenth-century Britain. Seduced by the grandson and heir, Anne never really has a chance when the discovery of her stillborn baby is seen as an obstacle to her lying lover’s dynastic marriage. At this point, things turn very dark, when Anne, after giving birth in a filthy privy is then gaoled in revolting conditions in Oxford Castle. The description of her attempted hanging is equally brutal, and the author is right not to hide such harsh truths from young readers who may otherwise be taking away far rosier impressions of the past after seeing too many period dramas on television. Strange then that Hooper in an otherwise excellent novel crammed with interest should have made her heroine quite such an unmitigated Goody Two-Shoes. We are told in an afterword that the real Anne Green became something of a celebrity, making appearances in taverns and fairs along with the coffin in which she had originally been placed. The Anne of the novel is much too sweet and demure to have ever contemplated such an extensive cashing in on a terrible injustice. That apart, this novel is a fine achievement, full of tension as readers will Anne to make her recovery before the grisly business of her planned dissection at the hands of some distinguished Oxford surgeons finally swings into action.