All Her Beautiful Deaths by A. Rushby: An art world historical page-turner

Given its historical women’s fiction label, I took a punt on A. Rushby’s All Her Beautiful Deaths, not being at all keen on the idea of gendered descriptions, but I was attracted by the idea of Victorian memorial portraits. It follows Minnie, who becomes a companion to Edith in 1865, and Hadley, a young twenty-first century artist whose work has been derailed by grief.

These images. These women. They are not Victorian objects. Possessions. There is no voyeurism here. We are with them and they are with us. They speak to us. Live on in these images.

Minnie is in desperate straits, alone in the world but for her twin sister, afflicted with a heart condition and a violent husband. Employed as a domestic servant, she’s asked to provide companionship to Edith by her twin Edmund, the sole survivors of the brain fever that had afflicted the family. Already discomfited by Culpepper House’s position overlooking Highgate cemetery, Minnie is horrified when she sees Edith photographing a young woman together with a swan, both apparently dead. Many years later, Elke buys four Victorian memorial portraits in a house clearance in Australia’s Blue Mountains. She and Hadley adore these pictures, works of art whose history neither knows. When Elke dies, just a year after Hadley’s mother, the photographs become Hadley’s but one is missing, stolen in the aftermath of her mother’s death and about to be the centre of an installation by Hadley’s exploitative ex-boyfriend. When Hadley defaces his website, she finds herself first invited to take part in festival devoted to women’s art, then asked to dinner by Kit Culpepper, a philanthropist who makes clear his interest in the portraits. As Hadley’s career takes off, she becomes the target of threats and unable, it seems, to escape Kit’s attention.

Because I was hers and she was mine. Because of the threads that tied us to each other. Those threads that remain even when her corporeal presence does not. 

There’s more of Hadley’s narrative than Minnie’s which tells us the story of Edith’s beautifully staged portraits before Hadley catches up with it. Hadley is anchored in the art world, her mother a renowned artist, while Elke was a photographer entranced by Edith’s exquisite images and a firm believer in Hadley’s talent. The pace quickens when Hadley takes up the offer of installation space at Tate Modern, speeding up as threatening texts are sent, Kit ups the ante in his efforts to purchase the portraits and Hadley becomes more determined to find out the truth behind them. The reveal is not only satisfying but one which I’d not come close to guessing. A much more commercial novel than usual for me and there were a few jarring notes largely thanks to that, but I found it compulsive, enjoying its art world backdrop, and the subject is a fascinating one. Happy to read more by Rushby although probably not her debut, Slashed Beauties, which sounds a step too far for me with the blurb’s mention of a ‘magical’ plot.

Verve Books: Harpenden 9780857309280 416 pages Hardback (NetGalley)