Eighteen-year-old Carlotta Dell’Oro has been abandoned and, before that, so too have her parents, mysterious Clotilde and obsessive Leopoldo, who were thrown together at sea in traumatic circumstances. Each is destined to embark on further voyages in search of those who have left them desolate. Adrift in a sparkling metaphorical Victorian world of water and glass, reflection and hallucination, the American writer Lori Baker’s characters are like the decaying marine samples in their pentagonal family home in the Yorkshire port of Whitby: otherworldly, exotic, trapped. As Leopoldo gradually masters the precision required to make his uncanny glass creatures, Baker, through Carlotta’s startling narrative voice, crafts a delicate poetic vessel for a story that gathers power, succeeding both as a haunting dream and as a convincing historical picture.
