Book Review: ‘The Lost Apothecary’ by Sarah Penner

The Lost Apothecary is the debut novel by author Sarah Penner. This historical mystery is split between the late 1700s and the present day.

The story is told by three separate narrators. In 1791 Nella runs an apothecary shop in London that offers a very special and highly illegal service – she dispenses poisons to women who want to discretely remove problematic men from their lives. The second 1791 narrator is the twelve year old Eliza. When she acquires a poison from Nella neither of them know that the encounter will change both of their lives forever. More than 200 years later Caroline has come on a solo trip to London to escape her cheating and manipulative husband. Whilst mudlarking on the Thames she finds a glass apothecary vial. With her love for history reawakened, Caroline is determined to uncover more about the shop and what happened to its owner.

Each of the three main characters serves a different purpose. Nella (and her apothecary)  is the core plot thread that grounds the novel and binds everything together. Her life is the framework for the story; without which none of the other events could happen. Eliza is the inciting incident. Her arrival changes the direction of the story and creates the tension within it. Caroline brings resolution to the story. As she uncovers the mystery of what happened, she leads the story to its conclusion as together we uncover the fates of all three women.

Of the three I found Nella the most interesting character. Her ledger, which records all of the transactions in the apothecary, holds so many stories as Nella moves in and out of other people’s lives like a ghost. She has a clear set of morals (to help only women and to never harm another woman) and a vast intellect that allows her poisons to be disguised within seemingly innocent food and drink. Although The Lost Apothecary is a stand-alone novel I would love to read a collection of short stories about Nella’s different clients and their reasons for visiting the apothecary.

Penner intentionally set her novel during a time when poisons were still widely undetectable during autopsy. This meant that victims typically appeared to have died from natural causes – or at least from suddenly brought on symptoms that couldn’t be explained. Although the characters in the novel are fictional, secret poisonings were a very real event. The true number of historical and slight of hand poisonings will likely never be known.

The Lost Apothecary is ambitious in combining two time periods and two stories into one novel. I felt that sometimes this blending worked and sometimes it didn’t depending on which character we were following (Eliza was just too precocious and annoying for me to properly like) and sometimes the jumps from past to present took me out of the story for a moment. However the book and Penner’s writing was easy to read and follow. Overall I enjoyed this book.

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