A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

(Del Rey, 2023)

Reviewed by Ksenia Shcherbino

A Study in Drowning, Ava Reid’s new book has a certain air of neo-Victorian feminist gothic along the lines of Elizabeth Bronfen’s argument in Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic (1992) about the Victorian fascination with dead (or not so dead) female bodies captured by the male gaze. It reminded me of A.S. Byatt’s Possession: A Romance (1990): both novels are poised between a detective story and a textual analysis exercise and infused with mythology and gender studies written in a stunning poetic prose.

Continue reading…

Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.