Review - The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
My Review A very atmospheric and enthralling historical novel about a man who seeks to fill the emptiness in his life with wonder and beauty, which almost becomes his downfall. Jonah Hancock is a middle aged widower, an 18th century merchant and not taken to flights of fancy. He could be said to be staid and unimaginative. But when he is offered a chance to accrue riches beyond his dreams by gambling his fortunes on the ownership of a curiosity, a strange thing found on a fated sea voyage which he is assured is that mythical beast - a mermaid, he acts out of character and sets in motion a series of events which ARE about to change his life, just perhaps not in the way he could have imagined. Persuaded that the way to recoup any losses invested in this awful and frightening denizen of the deep is to display it in public, eventually brings onto his radar the beautiful and capricious Angelica, a courtesan of some repute, her shallowness and flightiness is the opposite of his dull, pondero...