The Conviction of Cora Burns - Carolyn Kirby - Blog Tour and Review

The Conviction of Cora Burns - Carolyn Kirby - Blog Tour and my Review.

Hello readers, have I a treat in store for historical fiction and mystery enthusiasts. I'm chuffed to be part of the Blog Tour for the brand new novel by Carolyn Kirby, The Conviction of Cora Burns, which I hope you'll enjoy as much as I have.

Review:

No Exit Press has dished up an absolute corker of a book with the Conviction of Cora Burns. It drew me in right from the beginning and was as unputdownable as any reader could hope to find. A mix of history, mystery, psychological twists, and emotion there is something in Cora's story for everyone.

Cora herself is an extremely complex and unpredictable character, yet I grew to like her and be rooting for her despite the knowledge almost from the start, that she was involved in a heinous and inexplicable crime one could not possibly condone.

She has already led a pretty grim life, abandoned at birth by her convict mother, brought up in a series of institutions, from workhouse, to prison, to asylum she has never known any affection or love, apart from a childhood friend whom she regarded as a sister, with whom she has lost touch and longs to be re-united with. In fact, this mission becomes her obsession and her search for the missing girl is what drives cora.

Poor Cora, she has a lot of anger and bewilderment in her, but as her story begins to unfold within these pages, she is setting out alone, in Birmingham, with few belongings just a half medallion engraved with a few enigmatic letters tucked inside her bodice which she is sure holds the key to her own past. Hoping to build a new future for herself, she suddenly finds herself alone, needing work and a roof over her head and everything in the outside world into which she is released is unfamiliar and confusing.

It is 1885 and a woman has few rights and very little chance of earning a decent living even if she is of good character. But Cora, eventually manages to secure a domestic service position in the rather strange household of a strange and troubled scientist. Thomas Jerwood is conducting a series of experiments on whether criminal traits and insanity are inherited or can be learnt. In his household where Cora gets a somewhat dubious job as a tweeny, a maid of all work, she struggles to fit in with the other servants. She discovers he has a mad wife locked away in an upstairs room and meets his ward Violet a young girl who seems to grow attached to Cora, whilst also being the subject of his experimental research. Cora begins to wonder if she is also being studied.

Reminiscent of the wonderful book “The Observations” by Jane Harris, and with an undercurrent of wonderful recent books by Laura Purcell, Anna Mazzola and Ruth Wade this is a gripping and scary search by one woman for her own past. As Cora’s history is somewhat fractured so are her reactions to everything she discovers. 

Nobody has ever shown her how to do things and from being asked to wash dishes, never having done anything like this before, tries to wash them in cold water to sharing a room with a fellow servant, she seems to get everything she tries, wrong and you can feel her utter frustration at trying to get things right and again and again misjudging people and events.

This is a wonderfully entertaining and thought-provoking book, with a narrator whose reliability is questionable and whose behaviour can be both shocking and at times amusing.

Her story has left a lingering impression me and a couple of weeks after having read the book little snippets keep returning to me. It has the literary depth to bear multiple readings as different layers are unpeeled throughout, revealing Cora's personality and longings. With unexpected little Oh's and Ahh's around each corner.


Is Cora an inbred criminal? A lunatic? Or a misunderstood young woman desperately seeking only someone or something to love? Her story had me in tears at several points.  I really loved this book, which if you like similar books to those I read and the authors mentioned above, will completely enthral you. 

Published by No Exit Press
Available here on Amazon or Waterstones and your favourite bookshops.

The Blurb

Set in 1880s Birmingham, Carolyn Kirby’s stunning debut The Conviction of Cora Burns tells the story of Cora, a young woman born in a prison to a convicted criminal she never knew but from whom she fears she has inherited a violent nature. Perfect for fans of Sarah Schmidt, Anna Mazzola and Hannah Kent.

Cora was born in a prison. But is this where she belongs?

Birmingham, 1885.

Born in a gaol and raised in a workhouse, Cora Burns has always struggled to control the violence inside her.

Haunted by memories of a terrible crime, she seeks a new life working as a servant in the house of scientist Thomas Jerwood.

Here, Cora befriends a young girl, Violet, who seems to be the subject of a living experiment. But is Jerwood also secretly studying Cora…?


With the power and intrigue of Laura Purcell’s The Silent Companions and Sarah Schmidt’s See What I Have Done, Carolyn Kirby’s stunning debut takes the reader on a heart-breaking journey through Victorian Birmingham and questions where we first learn violence: from our scars or from our hearts.

The Author:

Originally from Sunderland, Carolyn Kirby studied history at St Hilda’s College,
Oxford before working for social housing and then as a teacher of English as a
foreign language.

Her novel The Conviction of Cora Burns was begun in 2013 on a writing course
at Faber Academy in London. The novel has achieved success in several
competitions including as finalist in the 2017 Mslexia Novel Competition and as
winner of the inaugural Bluepencilagency Award. Carolyn has two grown-up

daughters and lives with her husband in rural Oxfordshire.