Product Description

A Cambridge historian, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found drowned, clutching a glass prism in her hand. The book she was writing about Isaac Newton’s involvement with alchemy—the culmination of her lifelong obsession with the seventeenth century—remains unfinished. When her son, Cameron, asks his former lover, Lydia Brooke, to ghostwrite the missing final chapters of his mother’s book, Lydia agrees and moves into Elizabeth’s house—a studio in an orchard where the light moves restlessly across the walls. Soon Lydia discovers that the shadow of violence that has fallen across present-day Cambridge, which escalates to a series of murders, may have its origins in the troubling evidence that Elizabeth’s research has unearthed. As Lydia becomes ensnared in a dangerous conspiracy that reawakens ghosts of the past, the seventeenth century slowly seeps into the twenty-first, with the city of Cambridge the bridge between them.

Filled with evocative descriptions of Cambridge, past and present, of seventeenth-century glassmaking, alchemy, the Great Plague, and Newton’s scientific innovations, Ghostwalk centers around a real historical mystery that Rebecca Stott has uncovered involving Newton’s alchemy. In it, time and relationships are entangled—the present with the seventeenth century, and figures from the past with the love-torn twenty-first century woman who is trying to discover their secrets. A stunningly original display of scholarship and imagination, and a gripping story of desire and obsession, Ghostwalk is a rare debut that will change the way most of us think about scientific innovation, the force of history, and time itself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #445704 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-08
• Released on: 2007-05-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. British historian Stott makes a stunning debut with this hypnotic and intelligent thriller, the first fiction release of a new Random House imprint. The mysterious drowning death of Elizabeth Vogelsang, a Cambridge University scholar who was almost finished writing a controversial biography of Isaac Newton, leads her son, Cameron Brown, to recruit Lydia Brooke, his former lover, to complete the book. That request plunges Brooke into probing two ostensibly separate series of murders: one in the 17th century claimed the lives of several who stood between Newton and the fellowship he needed to continue his studies at Cambridge; the other in the present day appears to target those who have offended a radical animal rights group. Brooke's work may be haunted by a ghost from Newton's time who guides her to a radical reinterpretation of the role of alchemy and the supernatural in Newton's life. Much more than a clever whodunit, this taut, atmospheric novel with its twisty interconnections between past and present will leave readers hoping Stott has many more stories in her future. (May)
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From The New Yorker
Drawing on alchemy, neurology, animal-rights activism, and supernatural visitations, this début novel is an ambitious, learned thriller. A Cambridge historian dies under suspicious circumstances, leaving behind the nearly completed manuscript of a book on the alchemical experiments of Isaac Newton. Her son, a research scientist, hires his former lover, Lydia, to finish the book. Meanwhile, a shadowy group of animal-rights activists escalate their violent attacks. As Lydia is drawn further into Newton’s seventeenth-century world, she begins to believe that his ghost is haunting her and, perhaps, directing the murderous events of the present. Stott, a historian of science, deploys her research effortlessly and demonstrates great attention to detail, but the proliferation of themes means that none are explored in much depth. Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker

From Bookmarks Magazine
Most of us know Sir Isaac Newton as the author of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), the father of classical mechanics, and a forerunner to the Enlightenment. Less known was his interest in magical alchemy and the occult, nearly inseparable from his scientific studies. British historian Rebecca Stott's debut novel (after Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough) successfully explores this scientific-supernatural union. Although first a murder mystery, Ghostwalk is also a reflection on metaphysics, a centuries-old ghost story, and a romance. Critics especially praised the realistic depiction of 17th-century Cambridge and the inclusion of parts of Elizabeth's book. "But most important," notes the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, "Stott knows how to tell a good story."
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

Customer Reviews

"The ghosts have not been laid to rest after all."
Rebecca Stott's "Ghostwalk" suggests a powerful connection between the past and the present. After historian Elizabeth Vogelsang is found drowned under mysterious circumstances, writer Lydia Brooke agrees to finish Vogelsang's manuscript about Isaac Newton. When she moves into Elizabeth's home to conduct her research, Lydia is shaken by a series of bizarre occurrences. Although the idea seems preposterous, Lydia begins to suspect that, for some inexplicable reason a spirit from the past may want to stop her from completing the book.

The story is told in flashback. Lydia, the first person narrator, is apparently recovering from a severe shock. By putting her thoughts in order, she may be attempting to clarify whatever happened that made her suddenly start believing in the supernatural. As a result of her work on Elizabeth's manuscript, Lydia realizes that the past can never completely be laid to rest. It is "like a stain in an old stone wall that seeps through the plaster." Elizabeth was immersed in the seventeenth century, and something or someone from that century may have killed her.

This story has three interwoven threads: one is the tangled relationship between Lydia and Elizabeth's son, Cameron. In spite of the fact that he is married, Cameron is a philanderer who has a long romantic history with Lydia. Although she left him before, Lydia cannot bring herself to reject Cameron when he reenters her life. The second is a series of ever-escalating attacks allegedly carried out by animal rights activists against Cameron (a neuroscientist and a fellow of Trinity College) and his colleagues, all of whom engage in animal experimentation. The third deals with Elizabeth's inquiries into Newton's life and work. Newton desired fame and recognition, but his prospects, at first, were dim. Could he have resorted to murder to achieve his goals? As Lydia tries to make sense of Elizabeth's fragmented notes, she learns about a mysterious Mr. F, who may be the key to understanding exactly what happened centuries ago.

"Ghostwalk" is well-researched, with marvelous passages about glassmaking, alchemy, and the sights and smells of Cambridge in 1664. The mystery is a bit jumbled, especially the tenuous link between deaths that occurred hundreds of years ago and those in the present. Stott juxtaposes realism with fantasy, and at times, the two coexist with difficulty. Nonetheless, Stott is a compelling storyteller, and she effectively moves her narrative along, using foreshadowing to prepare the reader for the strange developments to come.

The characters are all well-drawn. Cameron is a fanatic about his work and his dedication may have led him to make unwise choices. He is also a man who has grown comfortable with lying. Lydia is a brilliant and intuitive woman who will need great strength and courage to handle the many difficulties that thwart her at ever turn. Dilys Kite is a half-blind medium who helps both Elizabeth and Lydia communicate with people "from the other side." She is amusing in the way that she refers to ghosts as if they are standing right next to her, and her expertise proves invaluable to Lydia. Will Burroughs is a lovely and secretive young woman who may have more information about what is going on than she is willing to reveal.

Although this is an ambitious, provocative, and intriguing novel, it falters a bit at the end. Unexpected developments distort the plot so much that a willing suspension of disbelief becomes extremely difficult. Still, "Ghostwalk" is worth reading for its lyrical writing and the author's intriguing perspective on Newton's life and times. It is "the dark history buried beneath the myth of a great man."

a great work
The great work of alchemy is both the subject and the controlling metaphor for this novel. Lydia Brooke takes on the task of ghost-writing the last chapters and final draft of a study of Isaac Newton's involvement with alchemy written by her friend, Elizabeth Vogelsang (also the mother of her former lover.) Initially Lydia sees the major elements of that process as Elizabeth's existing research and writing on Newton and the author's ideas about where the study was going, ideas that must be recovered from notes and conversations with Elizabeth's friends. The work is undertaken in Elizabeth's studio, a veritable retort of a space, all glass and light - air bright with sun and fire, the earth of an apple orchard all around, and the river on the margins.

The reader soon realizes what Lydia refuses to recognize: Elizabeth's son, Cameron Brown, Lydia's lover for a decade past, is a major element of the process in the studio. So the process she is consciously working on is not the process actually in motion. Lydia is not the alchemist here; that is Elizabeth - or, more precisely, the historical past. Lydia and Cameron are the elements in the chemical marriage. The really brilliant decision to narrate the novel as first-person directly addressed to Cameron underscores this.

But for the great work to succeed, the elements and the adept must be pure, a point Stott makes with the Isaac Newton material. No one is pure in this novel. Lydia lies to herself, to her friends, to Cameron, lies unnecessarily, casually almost. Cameron lies enormously, to everyone, and cheats cruelly, as well as undertaking a truly wicked course of action. And yet, perhaps the most impure element here is Elizabeth - as a metaphor for the past -- whose unexplained death opens the book.

Although the past intrudes, sometimes violently, the novel isn't actually a time-slip, insofar as we are not taken back to the 17th century. But there are long passages from Elizabeth's manuscript describing life for Newton in Cambridge of the 1660s. One reviewer here objects to that, but the novel is about perspective - Elizabeth's and Lydia's as well as Newton's. Putting the reader unproblematically into the past wouldn't work here; it needs to be mediated, since the work of writing is all about mediating reality.

As I read the book, I did wonder about the decision to market it as a thriller. It has very frightening moments and a number of people die violent deaths. On those grounds, yes, it is a thriller. But thrillers as a genre are not especially intellectual, generally relying more on action than introspection (says I, their constant reader.) This book requires thinking. But it rewards even the lightest efforts with a vast array of gifts - the history of glass-making, life during the plague years, glimpses into the alchemical work of writing itself, college politics in the rarified air of Trinity during Newton's time, a powerful love story and the tattered edges of a massive moral dilemma, the fascinating Stourbridge Fair pulling goods and betters from all over Europe through the dark maze of Fen canals to the very edge of Cambridge.

What I most admire most about the novel is the exquisite blend of science and beyond-science, both in the specifics of the book Lydia is completing and in the things that happen to her in and around the studio. The constant text messages provide an elegant present-tense example of time and space being magiced away. The characters, as other reviewers note, are wonderfully drawn. But almost as great is my admiration for the places Stott chooses not to go. She uses the animal-rights people, but she doesn't let that powerful topic pull her off-target. And resisting both the lure and the considerable marketing value of the Rosicrucians and other esoteric secret societies is positively heroic.

Talking with my friends, I divide books into two categories: Good Books and murder mysteries. They read Good Books, mostly, best sellers and Booker Prize winners and the things that people talk about at dinner parties. I read murder mysteries and thrillers.

With Stott's novel, I find that I have accidentally read a Good Book.

"Lying to you. Lying with you. Lying for you. Can I remember the difference?"


Weaving the 17th century of Isaac Newton with contemporary England, Stott mixes past and present in a heady brew of scholarship, an illicit affair and the insidious threat that defines the current age of terrorism. In 17th century Cambridge, soon after the return of the plague and the Great Fire of London in 1666, Newton pursues his experiments, his scientific interest married to alchemy: earth, water, fire, space and air transmutable to create all forms of matter. It is impossible to separate the two, critically dependent on information from "European secret societies, Freemasons and alchemists, groups of men in the Hague and in London, Cambridge and Paris". The secrets of the universe are at stake, the belief that the essence of life can be reduced to one invaluable formula. Science and alchemy are natural bedfellows in this century of experimentation, where nature's great secrets slowly yield to perseverance and dedication, certain groups charged with the safe-keeping of such powerful knowledge.

Modern day Cambridge is the repository of such arcane details. Elizabeth Vogelsang has dedicated years of her life to the study of Newton's accomplishments and is on the verge of an explosive discovery that will shock academia, tracking his movements like a modern day detective through the 17th century, identifying his close associates, questioning their loyalty to the cause and the mysterious deaths of five people at Trinity College. When Elizabeth is found dead near her cottage, the Studio, it is her son, Cameron Brown, who discovers the body. Since Elizabeth's book on Newton and alchemy is nearly finished, Cameron asks his former lover, Lydia Brooke, to ghostwrite the final chapters, so that his mother's work may not be in vain. Lydia moves into the Studio, the affair rekindled, even though Cameron is married and has no intention of ever leaving his wife.

The relationship becomes a sort of haunting, Lydia wandering through Elizabeth's alchemic world, awakening to Cameron but equally seduced by the unfinished chapters. Cameron's work is shrouded in mystery. A Doctor of Neuroscience and a Cambridge Fellow, Brown has recently made a breakthrough discovery that carries sinister ramifications depending on the application. A series of attacks by animal rights activists have been focused on the scientific community, increasingly violent acts threatening Brown and his family. Even Lydia is at risk as recent events snap the story back into the present.

As Lydia's carefully constructed corner of academia is threatened by real world issues and she suspects Cameron's involvement in darker deeds, the centuries merge, three deaths in Cambridge begging for comparison with those in Trinity long ago. In the language of love, tempered with the reality of serious harm, Lydia floats between two worlds, submerged in Elizabeth's intentions, while vainly attempting to remain neutral about her life with Cameron. Their love imbues the novel with otherworldliness, Newton's secrets contrasted with the sweet seduction of romance and the incipience of violence. With a facility for time travel, the author renders this strange mixture of past and present believable and tragic. Luan Gaines/ 2007.