The Taxidermist’s Lover

Toxic, obsessive love is at the center of Hall’s atmospheric debut, though predictability and repetition bog down the story’s potential. The narrator, Scarlett, recounts her tumultuous love affair with the much older taxidermist, Henry Royston Pepper, who she pushes to new creative heights by encouraging him to combine the body parts of many different animals. The novel initially reads as a dark, off-kilter romance, but as Scarlett and Henry’s relationship grows ever more fanatical, their story descends into the depths of gothic horror. Hall uses taxidermy to shine a light on the intermingling of sex and death (“When we made love, I’d somehow taste the essence of the creatures you’d been handling—the quick, acrid bite of a fox, the feathery scratch of an owl, the smooth perfume of someone’s beloved pet cat”), and Scarlett’s second-person address to Henry expertly evokes feelings of discomfort and claustrophobia in the reader. When the couple meet and become obsessed with Felix De Souza, the best taxidermist in the world, both professional and romantic jealousy rear their ugly heads. While the story’s climax feels like a foregone conclusion, allusions to The Bride of Frankenstein nicely ground the ending in the gothic tradition. Hall’s rich, decadent prose will be enough to convince genre fans to look past the novel’s flaws. (Dec.)