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A ghost story of the most unusual kind, The Telling is a thrilling - and sometimes chilling - tale about two women, separated by almost two centuries, grappling with change and loss.
After her mother dies, Rachel sets off alone to pack up and sell off the remnants of her family's isolated country house. But from the moment she steps through the front door, she feels that the house contains more than she had expected. Generations earlier, a young housemaid, Lizzy, called the same dwelling home. On course for a life of service no different from her mother and her mother's mother before her, Lizzy's world is upended by the arrival of a mysterious lodger. Interweaving the two narratives, Jo Baker - best-selling author of Longbourn - brings these women, both struggling against their stations and their duties, vividly to life.
What are you reading this week? And what did you think of last week’s books? (5/28/2026)
FINISHED: Suder is Percival Everett's debut novel and it explores freedom, identity, and madness through the life of a baseball player named Craig Suder. When Suder goes into a slump his coach puts him on injured reserve and urges him to get it together. Suder grabs a phonograph, a record, and a ...
-Anne_Glasgow
Baker tells others that she feels the Colony is better for the women than sending them to prison. Do you think this is true?
The Colony was a societal prison with little or no justification for "kidnapping" women and girls based on a whim of their looks, actions, or lives. Disgraceful!
-NanK
Edie says she wanted to be a singer but “abandoned it altogether as a stupid dream.” She goes on: “Abandoning your dreams is like abandoning a part of yourself.” What do you think about this statement? Should one always hold on to one's dream?
I think one should try to hold onto one's dreams, but life doesn't always work that way. Her dream to be a singer seemed unrealistic to me because as far as I could tell she only sang with her mother. No mention of being in a choir in her earlier days. How did she develop her voice? It wasn't clear.
-Lorraine_R
Madame Moreau is at first very cool to Edie but welcomes her into her home after Edie discovers the truth about the bakery. What is it about Edie’s response to the situation, do you feel, that elicits this change?
Madame Moreau can tell Edie has no alternative agenda. Edie wants to help and she's willing to stick her neck out.
-Cindy_R
Overall, what did you think of The Mysterious Bakery on Rue de Paris? (no spoilers, please!)
This is a great story. One feels like one is really along for the ride, feeling at one with the character Edie, telling her story. This is a movie of a book - in other words, you keep reading because you care about all the characters and the story unfolding before you - "just one more chapter bef...
-Lesley_F
Madame Moreau tells Edie that her father once said, “[T]he love you have in your heart for someone you cannot be with is never a burden to be carried. It is…[a] gift you can share in other ways.” What do you feel he meant? Do you agree with him?
I love this quote and will remember it! I really like the idea of sharing that love that I can only carry in my heart. To me it means that those we love are always with us - we may think of memories of them as we reach out to others who are with us. Or we may even reach out to others because of t...
-Shirl
"A delicate, atmospheric ghost story with satisfying layers of insight and substance." - Kirkus
"A treat to read." - Daily Mail (UK)
"What Jo Baker has done, with remarkable dexterity, is to make this ghost story intensely intimate." -The Daily Telegraph (UK)
This information about The Telling was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Photo: Ed Marshall/Timeout/Camera Pre
Jo Baker was born in Lancashire and educated in Oxford and Belfast. The Undertow is her first publication in the United States. She is the author of three previous novels published in the United Kingdom: Offcomer, The Mermaid's Child, and The Telling. She lives in Lancaster.
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