Ghostwalk By Rebecca Stott

Lydia Brooke is asked by an ex-lover to complete a book that his mother has been writing about the alchemical career of Sir Isaac Newton. The son had found his mother drowned, Newton’s prism grasped in her hand. While Lydia works to complete the manuscript, the past starts to press through into the present.

This is the first novel by academic Rebecca Stott, Professor of Literature at Anglia Ruskin University. Previously she had written such books as a partial biography of Charles Darwin.

At a talk that I attended, she said that one of the seeds of this book had been a chance encounter with a German expert on meteors, a scene recreated in the story. She also mentioned that the mother’s house in the book is based upon one in Hemingford Grey. I remembered that the Manor at Hemingford Grey was the basis of the GreenKnowe children’s books (written by Lucy Boston from 1954 to 1976) and I asked if there was a connection. Apparently the manor, a curious building which I once visited, is lived in by a relative of the architect who built the home in Rebecca’s book.

“Ghostwalk” is a slow burn of a tale with characters you might believe in but cannot trust. Translated into various languages (the Italian edition is entitled “The Newton Code” and got into that country’s best-seller charts for weeks) this is fast becoming a success.

Alchemists of my acquaintance still regard Newton as an Atriarch because of his local connections. Hopefully, this book will make a few more people check out the historical background to this yarn.

By Rutland Dedlock