This is a very strange book. You can see that my copy has a sticker saying it has been signed by the author, which indicates which cover to open first, but you could equally begin at the other end, the red side and read to the middle. The Turnglass is a tête-bêche. A book designed to be read from one end to middle, and then from the other end to middle – two twin stories but from different angles.
Gareth Rubin has written a Gothic horror at one end, opening in 1881 and an American thriller at the other end set in 1930s California. I read it Black first and then Red, but I think it would work both ways.
Unlike a previous novel with a similar switch, Susanna Clarke‘s novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, in which there were two different copies, a black one and a cream one, and though they were the same story, the perspective switched between the two characters, and one did not usually read them both; The Turnglass is two quite separate novels one intimately and intricately wedded into the other. Not to read both would be unsatisfactory.
The Turnglass is an un-put-downable romp, with nefarious characters and double-dealing, murder and mishap, exactly what you might expect from either genre, ab-sent any ghosts. It is clever and engaging.
deborahjs 