Book Review: The Clockwork Girl by Anna Mazzola

Sometimes you come across a book so atmospheric you feel transported. This is one of those books. Not that 1750s Paris is necessarily a place one would want to be transported to. In this book review I explore Anna Mazzola's startling work, The Clockwork Girl (2023).

The Allure of Paris c.1750

Reading Anna Mazzola's sparkling prose you can almost smell the filth in the streets of 1750s Paris and, worse, the corruption of the ruling classes. Mazzola skilfully contrasts the silk, lace and exotic clockwork birds of the new life her heroine, Madeleine, has found in the Royal Palace, with the filth of the slumland brothel where we first meet her, thus seeding thoughts of why France at this period was ripe for revolution.

This macabre little tale (don’t worry – we're talking Tales of the Unexpected, here not The Exorcist), is full of delicious surprises.