Mrs. Engels (McCrea)

Mrs. Engels 
Gavin McCrea, 2015
Catapult
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9781936787296


Summary
Very little is known about Lizzie Burns, the illiterate Irishwoman and longtime lover of Frederick Engels, coauthor of The Communist Manifesto.

In Gavin McCrea’s first novel, the unsung Lizzie is finally given a voice that won’t be forgotten.

Lizzie is a poor worker in the Manchester, England, mill that Frederick owns. When they move to London to be closer to Karl Marx and family, she must learn to navigate the complex landscapes of Victorian society.

We are privy to Lizzie’s intimate, wry views on Marx and Engels’s mission to spur revolution among the working classes, and to her ambivalence toward her newly luxurious circumstances. Lizzie is haunted by her first love (a revolutionary Irishman), burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes, and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be cared for.

Yet despite or because of their profound differences, Lizzie and Frederick remain drawn to each other in this complex, high-spirited love story. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—1978
• Where—Dublin, Ireland
• Education—B.A., M.A., University College, Dublin; M.A., Ph.D., University of East Anglia
• Currently—lives in the UK and Spain


Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978 and has since traveled widely, living in Japan, Belgium and Italy, among other places. He holds a BA and an MA from University College Dublin, and an MA and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. He currently divides his time between the UK and Spain. (From the author's website.)

McCrea on writing Mrs Engels: "I was lucky," he says. "I had a scholarship from the University of East Anglia that allowed me to put other work aside and immerse myself full time in this for a good two years. A lot of my research was into the nuts and bolts of what it would have been possible to say and do in 1870, within domestic space and outdoors."

About Lizzie Burns: "I thought long and hard about her being illiterate. I didn’t want that to impoverish her in some way. Every time she speaks, I didn’t want to think, Oh, this woman can’t read and write. I wanted to do the exact opposite. I wanted the liberties that she took with language to enrich her. (Both excerpts from Irish Times.com).

Book Reviews
Gavin McCrea is triumphant in his exuberant debut in creating Lizzie’s voice; she is dazzlingly convincing.
Antonia Senior - London Times


This is the best kind of historical fiction—oozing period detail, set in a milieu populated by famous figures and events about which much is known, but seen through the eyes of a central character who, due to her illiteracy, left no ready access to her experience in the form of letters or diary entries: a rich and accomplished first novel.
Lucy Scholes - Independent (UK)


This is an assured, beautifully written debut.
Mario Reading - Spectator (UK)


Ambitious and imaginative.... McCrea breathes real life into a historical character of whom we know next to nothing."
Daily Mail (UK)


McCrea’s novel, Mrs Engels, brings its historical characters to vivid and often—at least in Lizzie’s case—rambunctious life.... Clear-eyed, sardonic, self-deprecating, she is a strong literary heroine in the mould of the main characters of Emma Donoghue’s Slammerkin and Anne Enright’s The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch.
Irish Times (UK)


A marginalized figure in the history books, the fictional Lizzie Burns is a marvelous creation: an illiterate Irish daughter of the Manchester slums whose withering deprecations cut a swathe through the self-
delusions and hypocrisies of the founding fathers of Communism.... Laugh-out-loud funny, touching and tender, and almost Dickensian in its physical descriptions of the Industrial Revolution’s worst excesses, Mrs Engels is a stunningly accomplished debut novel.
Irish Examiner (UK)


(Starred review.) McCrae gives the illiterate Lizzie a vivid, convincing voice, sparkling with energy and not untouched by pathos. Her sharp, pragmatic observations offer a human perspective on historical icons.... But the heart of the novel is the beautifully realized romance between Lizzie and Frederick.
Publishers Weekly


Through Lizzie's singular perspective, peppered with her wry observations, readers are treated to a backstage look at the domestic lives of the most public 19th-century revolutionaries and their families. While Lizzie's story exists only marginally in the historical record, first-time novelist McCrea brings her to life in this soulful work. —Jennifer B. Stidham, Houston Community Coll. Northeast
Library Journal


(Starred review.) First-novelist McCrea well captures Lizzie’s fiery temperament, vivid voice, and complicated relationship with Engels, whom she both longs to marry and longs to be free of. Moving, finely detailed, rife with full-bodied, humanizing portraits of historical icons, and told in striking prose, this is a novel to be savored.
Booklist


(Starred review.) Lizzie's voice—earthy, affectionate, and street-smart but also sly, unabashedly mercenary, and sometimes-scheming—grabs the reader from the first sentence.... Forget Marx and Engels.... For Lizzie (and McCrea), social mores trump politics, while individual loyalties and needs are what ultimately matter. Who knew reading about communists could be so much fun?
Kirkus Reviews

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