The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge review – a witty fantasy about Victorian society

Hardinge riffs on the themes of evolution, nature and nurture, and the place of women, in a darkly entertaining tale

There is no mistaking the distinctive voice and vividly crafted prose of Frances Hardinge. She is a writer who delights in language, and whose stories fizz with ideas, allusions and eccentric detail. In this dark, quasi-historical, quasi-fantastical tale, which is set in a post-Origin of the Species 19th century, Hardinge riffs on the themes of women’s place in society, evolution, nature and nurture, and the anatomy of lying.

“Listen, Faith. A girl cannot be brave, or clever, or skilled as a boy can. If she is not good, she is nothing. Do you understand?” So says the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly – gentleman scientist and Victorian patriarch – to Faith, his clever and devoted teenage daughter, who longs to follow in his footsteps and study natural science. Faith is hungry for knowledge and experience, yet she is constantly thwarted by the age and society into which she has been born. As a doctor and keen craniometrist tells her (with regard to the inferior size of the female skull and, ergo, intelligence), “too much intellect would spoil and flatten [the female mind] like a rock in a soufflé”. Little wonder that her frustration manifests itself in behaviour that is not always strictly ladylike.

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