The Journal of Dora Damage

This remarkable first, and last, novel starts out being a Dickensian picture of London’s underbelly and rapidly turns into a bibliophilic delight, morphing eventually into a romantic thriller. Dora Damage is a bookbinder’s wife, separated from the business by the strictures of the time that limited women’s role in all business. Dora, however, is as clever with her hands as she is observant and, when Peter, her husband, is struck by severe rheumatoid arthritis, she takes over for him, fulfilling contracts for bindings of books from the library of Sir Jocelyn Knightley, supervised by the dastardly Charles Diprose, Knightley’s toady. Her work expands as books from the library of an elite club, the Noble Savages, begin to appear for binding. Dora discovers, much to her initial dismay but eventual great profit, that all the books have one thing in common: they are all classics of pornography.

Jack, Dora’s apprentice, is eventually taken by police for homosexuality, his place is taken by Din Nelson, a mysterious American slave who has escaped to England and is part of a secret band bent on kidnapping Jefferson Davis, Pansy, a girl off the streets who has also a bit of binding experience, and Sylvia, Knightley’s pregnant wife who he tosses out for reasons I will not divulge. Quite the mob is assembled at the bindery and, when Dora receives s commission for a book to be bound secretly on mysterious leather, things begin to unravel quickly. All but Dora and Din are not quite what they seem to be and as the evil and the good clash, the action speeds to a rapid conclusion that finds not all happy but at least appropriately dealt with.

This is author Belinda Starling’s first and last novel because, four days after completing it, she went in for removal of a cyst on her bile duct, became infected after an aneurysm and succumbed several weeks later at the age of 34. The historical material is dense but necessary because of the nature of Dora’s work, and the plot quick and satisfying, while somewhat quirky. Not as dense as Melville’s passages on the techniques of whaling in “Moby Dick,” Starling’s passages on bookbinding may even be educational for the reader who always wondered how books were constructed and bound. Starling goes into such detail about Dora’s various creations that I wished there had been illustrations!

A recommended read.