The Fortune Maker by Catherine Norton

Title: The Fortune Maker

Author: Catherine Norton

Genre: Historical Fiction

Publisher: HarperCollins Australia

Published: 2^nd August 2023

Format: Hardcover

Pages: 320

Price: $22.99

Synopsis: Which is more dangerous – a future you can’t see – or one that you can?

London, 1913

Twelve-year-old Maud Mulligan knows there’s no future for her in London, in the rat-infested slum where she grew up. But in the tunnel under the river are fortune tellers, Seers, who will tell your fortune for a few pennies. And then there is Mr Mandalay, Seer to the king and anyone else rich enough to afford him.

When Mr Mandalay sees Maud in a foretelling for a wealthy factory heiress, she believes Maud can save her family from financial ruin. But how? And why?

In a world shaken by suffragettes, scientists, and the threat of war, what could a girl like Maud do to change anyone’s future – or even her own?

~*~

Twelve-year-old Maud Mulligan has lived in Silver town her whole life with her father, and they know there is no future there, so they’re saving up to sail away to Australia. It’s 1913 and in England, the class divide is stark, women are marching for the vote, and science is developing at a rapid rate, bringing new developments and ideas into a society that is unbeknownst to them, on the brink of war and major social upheaval and change. And in Maud’s world, there are those who claim to tell the future. They dwell in the tunnels below the river. One day, Maud’s house sinks in the mud, and not long after that, she’s left alone after her father drowns. Worried about her future and the visions of mists she keeps seeing, Maud runs away. One day, she picks up the ribbon of a rich girl – Eleanor. Maud is pulled into the world of Seers and Mr Mandalay, and what is to come for a factory. Mr Mandalay believes Maud can see the future and therefore save Eleanor and her family’s fortune, but Maud has no interest – and in a world on the brink of war, what sort of difference can Maud make?

The Fortune Maker examines class and gender roles throughout, and the changing labour conditions of factories as the people who work in those conditions start to rise up and protest, demanding the money owed to them, in particular from the factory at the heart of the story and the foretelling about it. As Maud encounters suffragettes, she finds a community and people who are trying to help her, but there is always the fear that Mr Mandalay will find her as she explores the suffragette movement, and has visions of men covered in mud, women dressed in black, and people with covered faces and orange hands – she has no idea what these images mean. They’re the ones that come to her throughout the story – the visions and images that come through when people ask her other questions, and as a reader, I knew what was coming and what had come before – merely a year after the sinking of the Titanic, and a year before the outbreak of The Great War, as it would be known in Maud’s lifetime. The layers of history show that this book is more than an exploration of the role of fortune tellers. It allows the reader to see the world of pre-war London and the suffragette movement as England moved further towards granting women the vote. I knew this history, and having this knowledge meant I could see where things were going to go, whilst understanding why the characters reacted the way they did. It made the reading experience richer and there were times when I felt the trepidation of what was to come through Maud’s visions.

I loved that this novel was centred on women and girls, and their experiences of early 20^th Century London, from people like Maud, who were poor, to Caroline and her suffragette friends, and Eleanor, the rich girl who disliked Maud at first. I loved that at different times throughout the novel, these characters worked together to find out what Mr Mandalay wanted and to keep him from reaching his goals. The ending hinted at something more to come -though it worked well as a stand-alone book too.  Catherine Norton has taken history and given it life, given the ordinary people a voice. Much like Jackie French, she has centred women and the stories of those we don’t hear from because they don’t hold the balance of power, or they are people that have contributed behind the scenes and never acknowledged. These people and their stories make history richer, and show the diversity of stories, faces, and experiences beyond everything else that is known. Books like this show that there are many stories to be told, and many ways that they can be told for a range of audiences.

This book combines the wonders and intrigue of fortune telling with the perils of 1913 London and the differences between class and gender to create a story that is compelling, thrilling and where people find out who they can realty trust, and that friendship doesn’t recognise class or gender barriers that society throws up. It is a world on the precipice of war, where there is a sense of carefree nature about, and nobody is worried about what is going on half a world away yet. Maud’s story reveals that not everything is always as it seems or what we think it will be, and in terms of fortune telling, nothing is ever certain. This is perhaps a reflection of the real world as well, where we never really know what is going to happen, only that there is a future. And as we see through Maud – a future we can see and one we can’t see can be equally dangerous and just as uncertain as the other. An intriguing middle grade book for readers aged eight and over.