The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock: A Novel - Softcover

“Wonderful... completely transporting.”  (Madeline Miller, author of Circe and The Song of Achilles)

“Set in 18th-century England, with characters you might meet in a Jane Austen novel.... Gowar writes rounded, believable personalities. Her language crackles with ingenuity and grace, and she has an eye for the everyday particulars.” (Chicago Tribune)

“This glittering debut novel examines every rung of 18th-century London’s social ladder with keen wit and in delicious detail.” (People)

“Gowar’s debut delivers... anchored by Angelica, who contains an incredible complexity to her identity as a sex worker, as a wife and as a woman just trying to survive.... Gowar brings her story to life with lush, immersive descriptions.” (USA Today)

“It’s hard to believe that this brilliant and sure-footed work is a debut novel. Gowar’s feel for the spirit of the period is spot on... with an unsentimental acknowledgment of the harsh entrapments occasioned by gender, class and race; her prose sparkles with sly wit, inviting inevitable comparisons to Jane Austen.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

“Splendid.... One of the delights of this knowingly preposterous story is the dialectic it constructs between the real and the fantastic.... Each quality... infects the other: The real world of 18th-century London seems both lavish and perishable, and the fantastic world of mermaids feels deadly real.” (John Vernon, New York Times Book Review)

“It’s hard to believe that this brilliant and sure-footed work is a debut novel. Gowar’s feel for the spirit of the period is spot on... with an unsentimental acknowledgment of the harsh entrapments occasioned by gender, class and race; her prose sparkles with sly wit, inviting inevitable comparisons to Jane Austen.” (Entertainment Weekly)

“A fascinating, beautifully written, semi-historical take on mermaid mania, with two complicated human beings at the center of it.” (Bustle)

“Imogen Hermes Gowar explores eighteenth-century class, race and human curiosity in this brilliantly written novel. The characters are so powerful that overwhelm the story plot. This fairy-tale novel is full of imagination. This debut novel with a lot of romance makes Imogen Hermes Gowar a welcome voice in fiction.” (Washington Book Review)

“This is, indeed, a kind of fairy tale, one whose splendid combination of myth and reality testifies to Gowar’s imagination and talent.” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)