The most any of us probably learned about the arcane discipline of
alchemy is that it had something to do with turning base metals
into gold. What far fewer of us may realize is how much the
fanciful and seemingly impossible principles of alchemy contributed
to the hard sciences of today, such as physics and chemistry.

In THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER, British novelist Katharine McMahon has
stepped boldly into that shadowy period during the early 1700s when
alchemy was in its twilight and the new physical sciences ---
identified by such luminaries as Sir Isaac Newton --- were emerging
into daylight.

For those at the top of the great societal heap known in Britain
and Europe as the Age of Enlightenment, the whole universe must
have seemed ripe for the picking. Scientific discoveries had vastly
improved navigation, trade, medicine and manufacturing, bringing
exciting new products, pastimes and services into the lives of
those able to afford them.

Living outside London in a rundown rural estate on the periphery of
all this activity, Emilie Selden, an unlikely apprentice to her
reclusive widowed father, grows up as a rigorously trained natural
scientist and philosopher. Barely aware of social graces, human
emotions or the domestic arts, Emilie spends most of her first 19
years immersed in the intellectual crucible of her father's
laboratory.

Then the opposite sex happens. Now that would seem almost a basic
necessity for a historical novel, except that at this point several
things could happen. The story could have dissolved into a banal
romance with the usual steamy vocabulary; it could have forged
virtuously onward as a boring triumph of feminist brains over
shallow amour; or it could have lost its way entirely and become a
social justice tract about how hard life could be for the working
classes.

But this is where THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER shows much more than its
scholarly mettle. From this most delicate turning point --- the
year 1725 "when everything changed" in Emilie's retrospective eye
--- McMahon achieves a brilliant, poignant and utterly
unforgettable tour de force that weaves together the real
complexity of human confusion and aspiration.

It's not only about a brilliant young woman surviving on the edge
of her social and historical milieu; it's not only about love
betrayed and love fiercely guarded; and it's not only about the
thundering clash of ignorance and ethics. In McMahon's supple and
experienced hands, her story is all of this and much more. Emilie
is so fully and powerfully drawn that she fills, overflows, the
strangely diverse historical container in which she began, herself
a secret "experiment" whose conclusion is yet to be.

Through Emilie's reflections, notes, diaries and disasters, THE
ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER takes you from the glories of the Age of
Enlightenment to the foul underside of British 18th-century life,
and everywhere in between. It's a page-turner with startling beauty
and substance that takes the strange alchemy of a confused and
confusing time and refines it into true gold. This is easily
Katharine McMahon's best work yet.