The Death of Jane Lawrence: This one just wasn’t for me

The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling

Caitlin Starling’s 2022 novel The Death of Jane Lawrence got enthusiastic critical reviews and was nominated for a Stoker Award, so clearly people loved it. In spite of an interesting premise, the book was a disconnect for me. Your mileage may vary.

Jane Shoringfield is an orphan raised by a kind couple after her parents were killed in a war. She is impoverished, and no longer willing to be a drain on the resources of her guardians, she decides to arrange a marriage. She settles on a local doctor, Augustine Lawrence, as the husband. Jane plans to contribute her math skills (actually book-keeping skills) to the marriage, by keeping the surgery books. Reluctantly, Lawrence agrees with some specific provisos, and one is that Jane will never, ever spend the night at his family estate, Lindridge Hall.

Shortly after the wedding, circumstances force Jane to spend a night at the crumbling Lindridge house after all, and she sees another side of her new husband. He is paranoid, shaken, wild-eyed. The house is full of mysteries, locked rooms, empty, moldering libraries, rumors of ghosts, including a red-eyed woman who appears in reflection. In spite of the one condition being that she will never stay in the house, soon Augustine leaves Jane behind in the house while he goes back to his surgery in town. Jane begins to uncover secrets which lead to her doubting her new husband and herself.

Caitlin Starling

This, the first third of the book, is at least partially an homage to Jane Eyre, which made me inclined to like it. However, soon it drifts into a different current. A party of Augustine’s medical colleagues and magical practitioners descend on the house while Augustine is gone and reveal still more secrets. Jane investigates the death of Augustine’s first wife Elodie. She uncovers the practice of ceremonial magic at Lindridge, and how that factored in Elodie’s death.

I enjoyed the introduction of the conundrum of zero in mathematics, and I liked Jane’s approach to magic, which was how she would approach a mathematical proof. Even though I guessed one of the “twists” earlier, I liked the paradoxical situations near the end of the book.

I didn’t like either of the main characters. Jane starts off as an admirable character but shifts, sometimes a dewy-eyed ingenue, sometimes a strong take-charge person. She vacillates between self-pity and self-blame towards the end of the book. Augustine is weak and doesn’t seem skilled in either surgery or magic. Neither Augustine nor Jane held my interest by the second half of the story.

Another minor but persistent annoyance was the underdeveloped worldbuilding. Everything in the story is coded for late 19/early 20^th century England, but it’s not set there. The loss of organized religion and the different country names make no difference at all in the story, and they are not fleshed out in any meaningful way. There is no reason this story, exactly as written, couldn’t exist in a magical 1917 Great Britain, and no reason for it not to.

Starling’s prose is good, and she creates excellent imagery. I’ll be happy to give other works of hers a chance. This just wasn’t for me.