Beautiful Lies (Clark) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
As in her previous novels, Clark takes real events as her inspiration but allows herself the freedom to invent and embellish. Her historical research is immaculate without being overbearing…. As always, Clark doesn't rush through her plot. She develops the story gently, with revelations about Maribel's past folded carefully into scenes from the present, yielding a complex tapestry of tales. A captivating fable of truth and memory, Beautiful Lies speaks to us quietly yet with strength.
Andrea Wulf — New York Times Book Review


The charm of Beautiful Lies is that Clark breaks the usual Victorian moral code, exploring both the colorful world outside the drawing room and the depths of her characters' minds. A stirring and seductive novel.
Economist


An uplifting and ultimately optimistic tale, as well as being impressively narrated. The historical context is sound, and the plot thoroughly engages the reader. It is based on real figures and their circumstances, which are not widely known. This is a wonderful story; I have read Clare Clark’s previous three novels, all of which have been reviewed by the HNS, and this is by far the best.
Historical Novels Society


Clark’s fourth novel (after Savage Lands) offers an informative if disjointed portrait of the Victorian era, encompassing socialist politics, spiritualism, economic crisis, tabloid journalism, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, and family secrets. Maribel Campbell Lowe is the wife of an earnest MP, whose passion for the socialist cause puts his political career at risk. Maribel’s photography hobby brings her into contact both with the Indians of Buffalo Bill’s show and the growing spiritualist movement, whose members are fascinated by the possibility of spirits appearing in photographs, a sometimes accidental and often duplicitous practice. The core of the book is Maribel’s personal history, a secret life she has hidden at the cost of losing her family. When a devious newspaper editor comes close to revealing her past, and destroying her reputation and her husband’s career, bright, resourceful Maribel must take a stand. Individual vignettes—Maribel’s photo studio, the lively spirit of the Wild West Show, her husband’s involvement with socialism—will charm devotees of the Victorian era, but no meaningful connection between them is made, and the novel bursts at the seams as Clark struggles to wrap them up by the end.
Publishers Weekly


On the face of it, Edward and Maribel Campbell Lowe are a respectable Victorian couple with an estate in Scotland and a fashionable flat in Belgravia. He is a reform-minded member of Parliament whose associates include Oscar Wilde and William Morris. She is a beautiful, Chilean-born society matron who smokes too much and dabbles in photography. But Maribel is not who she appears to be, and unresolved ties to her past threaten to expose her family to scandal and ruin. At the dawn of tabloid journalism, with Buffalo Bill and his Wild West Show arriving in London to massive crowds and unprecedented press coverage, the Campbell Lowes provide great fodder for the gossipmongers. Edward's firebrand politics on behalf of the homeless and unemployed lead to considerable notoriety, casting an unkind spotlight on the couple. Verdict: Inspired by a real-life politician of the era and his wife, Clark (The Great Stink) presents another engaging, compulsively readable window into Victorian society. This should be a popular choice in public libraries.— Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
Library Journal


(Starred review.) An enthralling novel about an elaborate fiction, Beautiful Lies dazzles with its presentations of late Victorian London’s political and social occupations and a remarkable woman with something to hide.... An unpredictable, historically authentic take on how we all carry secrets.
Booklist


A well-rendered novel of extraordinary lives in Victorian London. Bodices are ripped, to be sure, but Clark (Savage Lands, 2010, etc.) offers much more than a genre romance with her tale of the darkly beautiful Maribel Campbell Lowe.... Enter newsman Alfred Webster, who...begins to warm up to a carefully hidden secret from Maribel's past.... Clark's characters play fine and psychologically dense games of cat and mouse.... It makes for a grand adventure, and Clark's novel is so richly textured and detailed that the reader might rightly wish that she return to her former profession as a historian.
Kirkus Reviews