A passion that is beyond reason

FIRE and air. Passion and reason. The elements that make up life -- and make life worth living -- vie for precedence in “The Alchemist’s Daughter,” a historical novel set in England during the Age of Reason.

At the heart of this, the first of five novels by British writer Katharine McMahon to be published in the United States, is Emilie Selden, a 19-year-old woman who has been secluded from the world at large. Her father, John Selden, a man of serious science who is enamored with alchemy, has raised Emilie in the country at the family’s deteriorating Selden Manor, filling her head with science but keeping her from the harsh realities of life -- and its passionate joys. Emilie’s mother died in childbirth, and the only contacts Emilie has with the world, beyond the setting her father has created for her, are limited interactions with the caretaker couple who see to the manor’s needs.

Her father has raised Emilie as a kind of experiment. If he can infuse her brain with all the knowledge he’s gained over his years, there’s no limit to the heights of scientific and alchemical study she might reach. “You are an empty flask, and I am filling you up as fast as I can. You are my daughter, and I will make you into me, just as if you were my son. And at the end of each day, I will write down your progress, so that when you become a great alchemist ... people will see how I did it. And when you lapse, I will write that down, too, and try to discover what has caused the weakness.” Emilie, it’s clear, is bright, well-educated, possessing a sharp mind, but her relationship with her father remains cool to the point of disengagement.

Of course, the intellect itself is never enough to sustain the human spirit, so it comes as no surprise when Emilie falls in love with a flashy Londoner who visits their estate and then proceeds, methodically, to seduce her. Whether Robert Aislabie is after the father’s assumed secrets of alchemy or Emilie’s inheritance, readers aren’t sure, but there’s no mistaking the scoundrel in him. Emilie, unprepared for the realm of boisterous hormones and urgent desires, bares herself to him.

And this moment, alas, is where the novel fails. Though needed as a plot device -- Emilie has to fall for Aislabie in order for the rest of the story to unfold, forcing Emilie into the larger world -- the seduction scene defies credulity as Emilie quickly and wordlessly changes from an intelligent, erudite woman into a blithering idiot. On a casual visit -- her father is away in London when Aislabie comes back to stalk his prey -- she succumbs, taking time only to realize “that my body had changed its behavior in such a radical and clamorous way during the past few minutes because it was priming itself not just for love but for reproduction.”

It seems unlikely that a woman of her learning, and of her era, would enter into a sexual relationship so blithely. This early bodice-ripping scene remains in the reader’s mind and raises niggling questions about the veracity of Emilie’s character throughout. Which is too bad, because the rest of the novel has many intriguing elements as it weaves in crisp and convincing moments from history: London in the early 1700s, the atmosphere and attendees at Sir Isaac Newton’s funeral, the life of manor peasants and the search for an alchemical elixir that would re-animate organic matter after death. If we can just get that one scene out of our heads, the rest of the story makes sense.

Certainly, it’s possible for fire to overtake air, as rock overtakes scissors. Still, even if we allow for the dearth of affection marking Emilie’s young years, the way passion eclipses the vast landscape of her powers of reason raises more questions than this engaging if flawed narrative is prepared to answer.

Bernadette Murphy, a regular contributor to Book Review, is the author of “The Tao Gals’ Guide to Real Estate.”