“A Great and Terrible Beauty”, by Libba Bray

Sixteen-year-old Gemma Doyle has just witnessed her mother being killed, and is now on her way from colonial India to finishing school in London. When she arrives at Spence academy, she is greeted by the catty in crowd, a closed wing of the school haunted by ghosts, and an invitation to the Realms – a place somewhere between life and death, where she runs into the ghost of her mother. Gemma then turns into a supernatural heroine, tasked with saving her mother and herself from the evil spirits which haunt the realms. Throw in a beautiful, haunting stranger named Kartik, and what results is a Victorian novel with a few added bonuses. Her ability to connect with the supernatural world just adds to her usual sense of teenage alienation, but in no time at all, she manages to use her powers to impress the popular crowd, and soon Felicity, Gemma, Pippa and Ann are fighting evil together.

What I loved about this book was Bray’s ability to employ all of the usual drama surrounding teenage girls – striving to be popular, questioning their roles in society, questioning their sexuality, and testing the limits of authority figures, but also adds in a ghost story and sets it all in Victorian England, which makes it just plain fun. Gemma is indeed, not a proper lady of the Victorian era, because of her sarcasm and radical ideas, much like a Jane Austen heroine. But rather than rendering the novel inaccurate in its historical appropriateness, Bray manages to simply depict Gemma as a woman who is ahead of her time, or maybe she’s just smarter than her contemporaries. The point here is not to be an accurate retelling of life in Victorian England, rather to portray Gemma as someone who knows better, as most scrappy heroines do.

I loved how realistic and contemporary the friendship between the four girls was, as well. Although their bitchiness toward each other sometimes rendered them unlikable, I found that Gemma’s desire for popularity and her need to be accepted by the in crowd was just as relatable as it is in any teen novel set in the present. Towards the beginning of the book, when she arrives at Spence, I found myself wanting something better for our heroine. I kept saying, “Come on, you can find better friends than that.” But by the middle of the book, the four mean girls have actually developed a sense of loyalty toward each other, and I was rooting for their friendship.  I can’t wait to read the other two books in the trilogy.

Book talk hook: The premise of the book itself is probably enough to hook readers, and I would maybe read aloud some of the fun language or sexual tension scenes between Gemma and Kartik.  The cover also has a fun image of a girl in a corset.

Bray, Libba (2003). A Great and Terrible Beauty. NY: Delacorte. 416 pages.