Glowing endorsements from Hilary Mantel and Kate Atkinson promise much, and The Quick certainly delivers. But what is this novel, the engaging debut of a 29-year-old Brit, actually about? I’m afraid that when it comes to the central premise, my lips must remain sealed. ‘You are not yet permitted, reader, to know the secrets of The Quick’ reads a blurb reminiscent of the classic pill scene from The Matrix.

I can promise, reader, that there is no sci-fi element in Lauren Owen’s fast-paced novel: it’s straight-up gothic horror, with the fin de siècle looming in Victorian England. A time when clubs of ultra-privileged, smug white men, like The Quick’s Aegolius Club, feared and detested what they saw as the degeneration of society. A time when Oscar Wilde went from literary darling to persecuted ‘invert’, and when women were expected to be the selfless angels of their houses – but seeds of change were sprouting. Owen has managed to write a 19th-century-style novel that criticises and analyses those times from a unique perspective, and she gives female and minority characters major roles that are realistic and highly sympathetic – sometimes heart-breaking.

It’s a novel told from multiple viewpoints, beginning with that of a girl, Charlotte, who lives with her younger brother, James, in a gothic paradise: a crumbling hall in Yorkshire with an out-of-control garden. With their mother dead and father absent, and few adults about, Charlotte takes responsibility – until their father returns and dies, and Charlotte does something potentially unforgivable. We then follow James as he studies at Oxford, moves to London and falls madly in love. Then, in a shocking scene, the true nature of the Aegolius Club is introduced, and James will never be the same … I recommend that you satisfy your curiosity post-haste.

Kate Goldsworthy is a freelance reviewer.