Blog Tour: Bone Rites by Natalie Bayley

Title: Bone Rites

Author: Natalie Bayley

Genre: Historical Fiction/Thriller

Publisher: Aurora Metro Books

Published: 31^st October 2023

Format: Paperback

Pages: 314

Price: $25.99

Synopsis: Winner of The Virginia Prize for Fiction

Bone Rites is a dark, literary tale of love, loss and one woman’s obsessive fight for justice and redemption within a ruthless world.

 I collected the first bone when I was twelve. This fact was not mentioned in court…Such a tiny little bone, more like a tooth. I only kept it to keep him safe.

Doctor Kathryn Darkling, imprisoned in Holloway, is facing death by hanging for her vengeance killing. Haunted by a spirit, she still hopes to perform the black magic that will free her soul, or her struggle to punish the mighty will have been in vain. 

Will the love of her life come to her aid? Or can she find a way to escape her fate? 

~*~

In 1925, Doctor Kathryn Darkling is a prisoner in Holloway prison. She’s accused of a series of mysterious deaths and is facing execution. She has two final requests – a chaplain and her friend, Jessica. Her chaplain arrives, and in the week she awaits her death and Jessica’s visit, she tells the chaplain, Charles her story about bone collection from 1904, when she kept the tip of her younger brother Freddie’s finger that was amputated. She moves through the subsequent years, into 1912, the suffrage movement, the First World War, and the Spanish Flu, her desire to gather bones growing as she grieves a significant loss. Death penetrates everything she does as a nurse, determined to save the dying boys as she wasn’t able to save Freddie. And from here, the book moves between 1925 and the years leading up to her arrest and imprisonment as she justifies her actions and beliefs to the chaplain. Yet her fate still awaits her – will Kathryn escape the shackles of death?

Natalie Bayley’s book, Bone Rites, won the Virginia Prize for Fiction in 2022, and was selected for the 2019 Blue Pencil Longlist and shortlisted for the 2021 Blue Pencil First Novel award, and longlisted for the Caledonia Prize in 2021 as well. As part of the blog tour for Bone Rites, I will be featuring this review as well as a guest post from Natalie about the book and the research she did for it, which all sounds very fascinating. When we meet Kathryn, she’s due to be hanged for crimes she committed for a ritual that began when she was twelve, and one that intensified during the Great War, leading her to murder those she and Freddie deemed responsible for what happened in those years. As the story flicks back and forth, the reader discovers exactly what Kathryn did at the same time as the chaplain, seeing her grief and determination unfold. She’s determined to save Freddie, to not be boxed into what society expects from her, and what all the girls around her – including her beloved Jessica – are doing.

The story holds back where it needs to, dropping clues in the first half, with a sense of foreboding drawing nearer as the flashbacks move towards the Great War and the adventure that the boys thought it would be. As the war and its related tragedies unfold, Kathryn sets out to right a wrong from the past and bring a loved one back to life. Going back and forth between 1925 and the previous twenty years ensured that the clues and events that had led Kathryn to where she was in Holloway prison are delivered when we need to know them and pack a punch when they arrive. It also explores the emotional reactions to tragedy through Kathryn’s actions, and her determination to maintain a sense of doing the right thing.

The 1904-1924 sections are the narrative are told as a story to the chaplain, uncovering societal expectations of what women should be and how they should act – they should be at home, married and having babies, not being doctors or in love with women, as Kathryn keeps hearing through her determination to be her own person. As one section ended and headed back to 1925, I kept reading because I wanted to find out where it was going, and as it was told in first person, a voice in the back of my head wondered if Kathryn would meet the fate she was headed for, or if she would indeed escape. It was the sort of book where either could have happened, and it was her deviousness and determination that drove the novel and the way everything eventually unfolded. The characters were well-rounded and showed the breadth of views and attitudes during the early twentieth century, digging into the interests and desires that women were not meant to have, or not meant to want to look at during this time. I enjoyed learning about this and heading into a world where we saw how gender roles played out throughout the pre-war, war, and post-war years, and the way a family can shape who you are.

This book was one that felt like it would be slow, but it had a really good pace throughout, getting a good balance between the slow and faster moments, making sure that they were delivered at the right times, and the characters deliberated at the right time as well. And it was an interesting study into how people respond to grief and the things it can make us see, do, or think – and shows that this reaction is different for everyone. This book is chilling and enthralling, and I think a great book if you want an unsettlingly compelling read that shows the impact of trauma following World War I, and that centres women and their experiences in a patriarchal world. I wasn’t sure what to expect going into this but I enjoyed it, and think it is one that will stay with readers for a long time.

This post is part of a blog tour and will be accompanied by a guest post from the author.