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The Haymarket

THE HAYMARKET is the second novel in Claire Rayner's series THE PERFORMERS, in which she will follow the fortunes of two families through succeeding generations from the beginning of the nineteenth century into the twentieth.

In her highly successful first book, GOWER STREET, she told the story of Abel and Lilith, who were rescued from the London gutters in the early 1800s. The conflicting passions which forced Abel and Lilith into diverging paths of medicine and the theatre have now left a legacy of bitterness.

In THE HAYMARKET, we meet them again eighteen years on, years in which they have stubbornly led seperate lives, absorbed in their work, brooding upon their love and their hatred: Abel as a surgeon ministering to the poor of the Seven Dials, Lilith as an actress at The Haymarket theatre. During these long years of self-tormenting isolation, Abel has been a tyrant to his growing number of children and to his weak, doting wife Dorothea.

Only Abby, his eldest daughter, a girl of sharp wits and maturity beyond her sixteen years, can command Abel's real affection. But Abby finds her loyalties divided when she falls in love with her father's apothecary, James Caspar; a secret to be kept at all costs from her father. With Abel's eldest son, Jonah, the situation is even more explosive. Abel's plans for Jonah are that he should, indeed must, follow him into the medical profession; but Jonah is equally determined to make his way in the world as a poet.

As an act of defiance he goes to the theatre — that place so irrationally, so savagely hated by his father. There he sees, and is fascinated by Lilith Lucas. In the green-room afterwards he meets Lilith's daughter, Celia, and then Lilith herself, is entranced by her beauty and vivacity, and falls victim to the same fatal spell which, unknown to him, his father has been trying to break for so many years.

And when matters are brought to a head by a morning's preliminary instruction in the fearful surgical art, Jonah runs blindly away to the only person he can run to, his one secret acquaintance — Lilith. Only Abby, sworn to secrecy, knows where he has gone.

The background to this captivating family saga is the development of the practice of medicine and the art of the theatre during a century and more of London life — two disparate professions in which the storm-tossed families become inextricably entwined. Each book is completely enjoyable in itself; but no doubt the reader who first meets Abel and Lilith in this book will be drawn to discover their origins in GOWER STREET and, it is hoped, will look forward with some anticipation to following the fortunes of their children in the volumes to come.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 320
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 9780671218126
  • Genres
  • fiction
  • Release date
  • 1974