Genre: Historical Fiction
Publication Date: 10th September 2013
Pages: 448
Book Source: Scribner & NetGalley
Synopsis: A brilliant rendering of a scandalous historical figure, Kate Manning’s My Notorious Life is an ambitious, thrilling novel introducing Axie Muldoon, a fiery heroine for the ages.
Axie’s story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day.
In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of “Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint” into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women’s reproductive rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says “trust me.”
When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official—Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie’s cunning and power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear.
Inspired by the true history of an infamous female physician who was once called “the Wickedest Woman in New York,” My Notorious Life is a mystery, a family saga, a love story, and an exquisitely detailed portrait of nineteenth-century America. Axie Muldoon’s inimitable voice brings the past alive, and her story haunts and enlightens the present
My Thoughts:
My Notorious Life is loosely based on the 19th
century New York midwife and abortionist Ann Trow better known as Madame
Restell. With stunning attention to detail Kate Manning chronicles the life of
Axie Muldoon, giving readers an unflinching and intimate view
of a woman's lot in life in 19th century America.
I've read many novels about women in this period,
their options and rights in relation to health and fertility sadly
lacking regardless of social class, the high risk of sexual exploitation,
responsibility and shame, often theirs alone to bear, women's bodies worn
out by multiple pregnancies. My Notorious Life is one of the best I've
read and it's an emotionally harrowing read.
Despite the heartache, this is still a novel of
light and shade. I adored the passion, angst, trouble and laughs that Axie and
fellow Orphan Train reject, Charlie, find in their marriage and life together.
I loved watching their characters' grow, falter, pick up the pieces and
mature.
Between Kate Manning's vivid writing and Axie's authentic and
compelling voice, I could not have been more thoroughly immersed in a period in
history ... the squalor, poverty, hunger, the disparity between social classes, desperation oozing from the
page and Axie's compassion and sensibility at the risk of her own safety, entirely believable.
Manning’s descriptions of Axie’s medical &
midwifery practices are alternatively fascinating and horrifying, hopeful and
heartbreaking ... regardless of your views, pro-choice, pro-life or other, I'd
be shocked if you felt anything but compassion for the plight of the women
described within these pages.
A powerful read and a favourite this year!
Connect with Kate Manning
THE WILD GIRL by Kate Forsyth** ~ a gift of storytelling about storytelling ... haunting, breathtaking, evocative.
DAUGHTERS OF THE NILE by Stephanie Dray ~ big and lush, it's a story to savour.
DARK HORSE by Honey Brown** ~ best psychological thriller I've read in years. Intense, edgy, tight.
THE SEA OF TRANQUILITY by Katja Millay ~ realisations & second chances, beautiful and heartachey.
IF I DIE by Rachel Vincent ~ hyperventilating awesomeness!
THE SWEETEST DARK by Shana Abe ~ ageless, exquisite and intoxicating. 
THE PERFECT MATCH by Kristan Higgins ~ laughs, tears, chemistry ... quirky goodness.
