Sign up for our newsletters to receive our Most Anticipated Books of 2025!

Summary and Reviews of Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Melmoth by Sarah Perry

Melmoth

by Sarah Perry
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 16, 2018, 288 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Oct 2019, 336 pages
  • Rate this book

About This Book

Book Summary

For centuries, the mysterious dark-robed figure has roamed the globe, searching for those whose complicity and cowardice have fed into the rapids of history's darkest waters - and now, in Sarah Perry's breathtaking follow-up to The Essex Serpent, it is heading in our direction.

It has been years since Helen Franklin left England. In Prague, working as a translator, she has found a home of sorts - or, at least, refuge. That changes when her friend Karel discovers a mysterious letter in the library, a strange confession and a curious warning that speaks of Melmoth the Witness, a dark legend found in obscure fairy tales and antique village lore. As such superstition has it, Melmoth travels through the ages, dooming those she persuades to join her to a damnation of timeless, itinerant solitude. To Helen it all seems the stuff of unenlightened fantasy.

But, unaware, as she wanders the cobblestone streets Helen is being watched. And then Karel disappears...

J. A. Hoffman
c/o The National Library of the Czech Republic

December 2016

My dear Dr Pražan –

How deeply I regret that I must put this document in your hands, and so make you the witness to what I have done!


Many times you said to me: 'Josef, what are you writing? What have you been doing all this time?' My friend, I would not tell you, because I have been the watchman at the door. But now my pen is dry, the door is open, and something's waiting there that will turn what small regard you have for me to ruins. I can bear that well enough, since I never deserved your regard - but I am afraid for you, because beyond the threshold only one light shines, and it's far more dreadful than the dark...

Ten days have passed and all the while I have been thinking only of my fault, my fault, my most grievous fault! I do not sleep. I feel her eyes on me and with hope and dread I turn, but find I'm all alone! I walk through the city in the dark and think I ...

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

Melmoth speaks to humanity's longing for redemption, while keeping its audience constantly on edge; make sure to read this one with the lights on...continued

Full Review (646 words)

This review is available to non-members for a limited time. For full access, become a member today.

(Reviewed by Meara Conner).

Media Reviews

Booklist
Starred Review. This is a sobering, disturbing, yet powerful and moving book that cannot fail to impress. The stories-within-stories and the Jewish themes recall Dara Horn's The World to Come (2006) and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch (2013), although Melmoth presents different kinds of nightmares.

Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. A chilling novel about confronting our complicity in past atrocities - and retaining the strength and moral courage to strive for the future.

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Perry's heartbreaking, horrifying monster confronts the characters not just with the uncanny but also with the human: with humanity's complicity in history's darkest moments, its capacity for guilt, its power of witness, and its longing for both companionship and redemption.

Reader Reviews

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Beyond the Book



Melmoth the Wanderer: Inspiration for Sarah Perry's Melmoth

Cover of the Penguin Classics edition of <i>Melmoth the Wanderer</i> by Charles Robert Maturin Though the story encapsulated in Sarah Perry's Melmoth is entirely her own, it derives its name and legend from Irish playwright, Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer. Published in 1820, Melmoth the Wanderer follows John Melmoth, a young student in Dublin, as he visits his dying uncle. Upon his arrival, he discovers an old portrait of a mysterious relative simply labeled, "Melmoth." At his uncle's funeral, John inquires about this photo and is given a manuscript transcribed by an old family acquaintance named Stanton, who has collected several dark legends regarding the being he refers to as "...

This "beyond the book" feature is available to non-members for a limited time. Join today for full access.

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

Read-Alikes

Read-Alikes Full readalike results are for members only

If you liked Melmoth, try these:

  • Circe jacket

    Circe

    by Madeline Miller

    Published 2020

    About this book

    More by this author

    Winner of the 2018 BookBrowse Fiction Award

    The daring, dazzling and highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestseller The Song of Achilles.

  • Black Rabbit Hall jacket

    Black Rabbit Hall

    by Eve Chase

    Published 2017

    About this book

    For fans of Kate Morton and Sarah Waters, here's a magnetic debut novel of wrenching family secrets, forbidden love, and heartbreaking loss housed within the grand gothic manor of Black Rabbit Hall.

Read-Alikes are one of the many benefits of membership. To see the complete list of this book's read-alikes, you need to be a member.
More books by Sarah Perry
Search read-alikes
How we choose read-alikes
Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $50 for 12 months or $18 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The Wager
    by David Grann
    From the bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon, a gripping story of shipwreck, survival, and savagery, culminating in a court martial that reveals a shocking truth.
  • Book Jacket
    The Frozen River
    by Ariel Lawhon
    From the bestselling author of I Was Anastasia comes a historical mystery inspired by 18th-century midwife Martha Ballard, who investigates a shocking murder.
  • Book Jacket
    The Bluest Eye
    by Toni Morrison
    The story of a black girl in America whose love for its blond, blue-eyed children can devastate all others. First published 1970; won the 1993 Nobel Prize.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Harlem Rhapsody
    by Victoria Christopher Murray

    The extraordinary story of the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance.

  • Book Jacket

    Three Days in June
    by Anne Tyler

    A new Anne Tyler novel destined to be an instant classic: a socially awkward mother of the bride navigates the days before and after her daughter's wedding.

  • Book Jacket

    Beast of the North Woods
    by Annelise Ryan

    When a local fisherman is mauled to death, it seems like the only possible cause is a mythical creature.

Who Said...

A few books well chosen, and well made use of, will be more profitable than a great confused Alexandrian library.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

D to T N

and be entered to win..