Invisible in a Bright Light

A freezing European city by the sea, 1870. On the opening night of the Royal Opera House, Celeste wakes in a costume basket after a disturbing dream and discovers that everyone backstage believes she is another girl. Above the singers, dancers, musicians and stage workers hangs an enormous crystal chandelier shaped like a galleon, blazing with hundreds of candles and carrying a history that Celeste cannot yet remember.

When the chandelier falls, a mysterious girl draws Celeste into the Reckoning, a dangerous game of bargains, identities and lost memories. The novel uses the machinery and hierarchy of a nineteenth-century opera house as the setting for historical fantasy: costumes and scenery conceal as much as they reveal, children work at the margins of spectacle, and the glamour seen from the auditorium depends on a hidden backstage community. Celeste’s search for her past becomes a struggle to prevent other lives being treated as pieces in someone else’s game.