27 Jan 2014 01:24:12
London, 1794. The coffee houses are abuzz with men discussing business and politics – news of the revolution in France rolls across the Channel like low-lying fog, infecting the city's radicals. Four wealthy City speculators know their daughters' impressive dowries can win them noble husbands, the girls just need a little polish first. A plan is hatched; they will band together, buy a pianoforte (the harpsichord is so passé) and engage a tutor to give the girls lessons in preparation for a cattle market-like concert to parade them for sale in all their accomplished glory.
The men purchase their instrument from a bad-tempered dealer, Vittorio Cantabile; his daughter Annie can teach their girls, he says, but one look at her gruesome hare lip – "a book with split pages, beauty above, monstrosity below" – and her services are spurned in favour of those of Claude Belladroit, a Parisian refugee and gifted player. Belladroit, however, is an all too enticing prospect – this talented liar and seducer is in cahoots with the scorned Cantabile, a man determined to wreak havoc in his clients' homes: if he has his way, their daughters will be as worthless a marriage prospect as his own.
But one of the girls, the "beguiling" Alathea Sawneyford, and her widowed father have a different agenda – the illicit pleasure they've taken together has seen Alathea visit the abortionist enough times that she'll have no need of the old hag's services again. Embroiled in Cantabile's plan, proud Alathea thinks she has the upper hand, but her fate ultimately lies with those who love her – her father and the disfigured pianist Annie.
Sedition – Katharine Grant's first book for adults – is as dark and deceitful as it is gloriously bawdy, the beautiful bastard child of Choderlos de Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses and Sarah Waters's Fingersmith.
