In Edinburgh, Scotland in the early 1920s, Evelyn Hazard is a young middle-class housewife trying to develop her social circle and yearning for connection and loving companionship from her husband Robert. There is an openness in the air looking to the future, trying to put traumas of the past, bother global and personal, behind: WWI, the influenza pandemic, and the death of her beloved sister.
But Evelyn also can’t shake a feeling of uncertainty and trepidation over the present and the future. Robert has fallen in with the growing Spiritualist movement, and her husband calmly tells her that he has discovered that he can talk to ghosts and must now devote his life to this job, this calling.
Robert’s involvement creates emotional distance in their marriage, with Evelyn unable to understand what has taken over his senses, afraid how friends and family will react to Robert’s newfound passion and vocation. But even more deeply, Evelyn fearfully considers the implications of Robert’s declaration and actions. Either her husband is crazy, or he is lying, or he is telling the truth and can really communicate with spirits of the deceased. Each possibility is more frightening to Evelyn than the prior, for she holds a dark secret that Robert or his Spiritualist medium companions might discover from a ghost and memory that still haunts her.
First and foremost, Hazardous Spirits is a historical novel rooted in the gothic themes and characters of the Spiritualist movement. The plot is simple and straightforward, and conclusions regarding the possible reality of supernatural elements are no more answered than they’ve been in cultures and society through history, including within and following the Spiritualist craze.
It’s also a character-driven novel focused on the psychology of Evelyn and the sociological elements of a woman during this time period in Scotland or similar Western middle-class locales. The Spiritualist movement coincides not coincidentally with the rise of women’s suffrage, as women within that movement and the rising middle class took on greater roles of leadership, independence and community engagement, even if within a context of potential supernatural matters explored in pseudo-scientific fashion. Evelyn at first fears the daring, the independence, and the relative deviance of the Spiritualist group that Robert becomes involved in, but going to the meetings to learn more about what is now in her husband’s life leads her to develop, even open up to possibilities, despite the dangers they may pose to her marriage or secrets. It forces independence in contrast to retreating into traditional, safer social relationships she expected in her life.
Hazardous Spirits also explores the moral questions of the Spiritualist movement as applied to practical situations, such as how practitioners might play with, or take advantage of, the emotions of victims or the traumatized. One of the most interesting characters in the novel is a young boy phenom in the movement, whose earnestness, magnetism, and seeming accuracy in prediction make him a star. Evelyn is bothered by the conflict between images of the innocence of childhood and the possibility that the boy is nothing but a brilliant, manipulative huckster, particularly when the boy, Robert, and the group in general become involved with helping police in a case of a missing child.
A fascinating book in its themes and characters, those looking for a lively book rich in plot would probably be more likely disappointed with Hazardous Spirits. Even that dark secret that Evelyn holds only serves as a minor element of plot without the resolution that some readers might expect or desire, such as from a supernatural thriller.
But any who love the gothic genre, enjoy historical fiction, have interest in the Spiritualist era, or appreciate novels that explore female protagonists in complex, realistic ways would find this worth looking into. The novel is relatively dialogue heavy, which means it does flow with an ease of readability, despite being ‘slow’ in its action/plot.
Salam also has a more recent novel out from Tin House that I hope to be able to read and review soon, but if she’s an author who isn’t yet on your radar, you may also want to start here.
