- Skip to main content
- Keyboard shortcuts for audio player
- LISTEN & FOLLOW
- Apple Podcasts
- Amazon Music
Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.
What's Hidden Beneath The Manor House? 'The Warlow Experiment'
Vikki Valentine
The Warlow Experiment
Buy featured book.
Your purchase helps support NPR programming. How?
- Independent Bookstores
What is lurking beneath Herbert Powyss' house?
That's the question at the center of British author Alix Nathan's novel, The Warlow Experiment. Powyss is a country gentleman. He prefers gardens and books to people; spends his days designing hothouses for his estate, growing exotic seeds, grafting pear trees and submitting minor horticultural findings to the world's preeminent scientific body, the Royal Society.
He lives surrounded by the ancient woodlands of the Welsh Marches and talks to his servants only long enough to give them a word or two of an order. He dines and visits with no one and is proud that he has only one friend — an old schoolmate in London who forces the events of the outside world on Powyss through his letters. The year is 1796 and it's only been a short while since the French sent their king to the guillotine and America won its independence. Revolutionary fever has spread to England; Thomas Paine's Rights of Man is now in the hands of England's laboring classes. Watch out, warns Powyss' old friend, England may be next to see its hierarchies overthrown.
Powyss is told these things against his will; he has no interest in revolutions, only in science. And so he embarks on his great experiment, one which could bring him fame: He offers 50 pounds a year for life to any man who agrees to live underground for seven years, without seeing or talking to anyone. He wants to see what exactly a man needs to thrive.
Powyss has in effect been living out this experiment above ground; he's just kicking it up a notch. He eagerly prepares the rooms for his experiment — the cellars that sit even deeper than the house's 13th-century moat. He bricks, plasters and papers over the thick, damp stone walls, lavishly decorates with beautiful objects he himself would enjoy — a Dutch still life on the wall; English landscapes and seascapes; his own chalk and pencil sketch of Robinson Crusoe. He packs the newly built shelves with Voltaire and Defoe, books on astronomy, mathematics. A lift he designed will bring down the same food he is served and remove dirty clothes and chamber pots.
A common laborer — John Warlow — is the only man to answer Powyss' advertisement. Warlow is "a great, brawny man ... rock-boned, his features crude." A man who has never seen his face in a mirror, a man who beats his six children and his wife. "Don't look dumbfounded, Warlow!" Powyss tells him as he shows him around his luxurious new subterranean home. Powyss lifts the lid on an expensive organ so Warlow can admire it, but the man only eyes him suspiciously, thinks, "What's him want me to do now?" All Warlow cares about is the bed.
Nonetheless, Powyss is elated as he walks up the stairs and orders his footman to nail planks across the door, sealing Warlow up for seven years. For he thinks he already knows how his experiment will end: Warlow will emerge spouting Virgil, his mind enriched by the solitude.
As in many a relationship (lord-serf, mother-daughter, master-pet?) Powyss is working out his own demons through those who are subservient to him. His father was erratic, his mother lost to religion: Powyss spends his entire adulthood proving to himself that he is rational, reasoned. He needs only himself, he thinks, and great works of art, of intellect — not the messy, bloody beings that created them. He is wrong. As his misbegotten experiment starts to go dangerously awry, he loses hold of his own mind. At the same time, revolutionary fever reaches his remote corner of the world and his servants begin to act on their thoughts and desires instead of suppressing them.
The estate's old order is broken, but it is the women, not Powyss, who suffer the most. Needlessly, terribly. Warlow's daughters, his wife Catherine (like her mother before her); Powyss' maids. The women in Nathan's novel are shut out from education, from most of the economy. They are at the mercy of the vain men exploding around them. Nathan is a lyrical writer, and a brutal and powerful one. No man ever looks at a woman in this book without rating her looks. The exception is Powyss' cook, who is old and therefore seemingly past such debasement. But then he decides to dismiss all of his staff, and she too breaks, "Who will employ a woman of my years, however good I am at cooking? For writing I cannot."
"Women be devils," Warlow likes to say. But he and Powyss are the monsters. The Warlow Experiment is the dark side of the manor house, a microcosmic exploration of a system where one person, by accident of birth, controls the fate of many. Herbert Powyss is not evil, but entitlement does flow through his veins. He is spiritually damaged, frail; he longs for love and doesn't know it, hasn't been taught to feel it, recognize it or protect it. Through him, Nathan shows how even a seemingly benevolent master can ruin lives as easily as he breathes. That underneath Moreham House's tables of sweet tarts and orange jellies, its Apulian vases and espaliered pear trees, its books of classical ideals and natural philosophy, there is the life of a servant or laborer, that of a mother or child, inextricably run down and destroyed. The system of entitlement is too entrenched and even revolution, large or small, can't save them.
What is lurking beneath Herbert Powyss' house? Exactly what we feared.
- ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN
THE WARLOW EXPERIMENT
by Alix Nathan ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 2019
A sturdy historical novel about the perils of pseudoscience, revealing how selfishly oblivious we can be to facts and...
An 18th-century Englishman tries to isolate a man in his manor’s basement for years in the name of science. What could go wrong?
Nathan’s second novel ( The Flight of Sarah Battle , 2016, etc.) is inspired by the true story of a man who offered 50 pounds a year for life to a man willing to live underground for seven years. But it’s strongly informed by what we now know about solitary confinement, which is to say it's a doomed endeavor. Herbert, a bachelor landowner in the West Midlands, put out a call in 1793 for a man willing to live alone in a well-appointed but windowless basement room, where he’d have a comfortable bed and regular meals (served via dumbwaiter). He has one taker: John Warlow, a laborer struggling to support his wife and four children. He’s barely literate, so the presence of Robinson Crusoe in the library is mockingly absurd, and the journal Herbert requires be filled for research purposes is barely scrawled in. Unsurprisingly, in time John grows confused and feral. What’s happening downstairs clarifies the power lines and capacity for cruelty and chaos upstairs. The servants and gardeners on the estate see John’s confinement as further proof of the need for the class revolution sweeping the country, while Herbert stubbornly digs in, determined to use John to justify his introversion. (Though Herbert’s contact with John’s wife, Hannah, complicates that attitude in multiple ways.) As an allegory of prison culture at its cruelest, Nathan’s novel forces its conclusion, and one friend exists mainly to send Herbert finger-wagging letters, but overall the novel is a powerful rebuke to the notion that withholding compassion can somehow be corrective. Nathan’s main strength is her keen characterizations of all involved, fully inhabiting Herbert’s selfishness and John’s confusion and slow, crushing descent.
Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54533-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION
Share your opinion of this book
THE NIGHTINGALE
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
More by Kristin Hannah
BOOK REVIEW
by Kristin Hannah
More About This Book
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
by Robert Harris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 22, 2016
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | LITERARY FICTION | RELIGIOUS FICTION | SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE
More by Robert Harris
by Robert Harris
- Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
- News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
- Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
- Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
- Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
- More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
- About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
- Privacy Policy
- Terms & Conditions
- Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Popular in this Genre
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
Please select an existing bookshelf
Create a new bookshelf.
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
Please sign up to continue.
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Almost there!
- Industry Professional
Welcome Back!
Sign in using your Kirkus account
Contact us: 1-800-316-9361 or email [email protected].
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.
Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )
If You’ve Purchased Author Services
Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.
- Member Login
The Warlow Experiment
Written by Alix Nathan Review by Bethany Latham
Enlightenment ideas and desire for personal acclaim influence reclusive, wealthy landowner and amateur scientist Herbert Powyss. He plans an experiment. How would complete isolation from human contact affect a man’s mind? Powyss advertises for a volunteer: he will take responsibility for the man’s family and provide a generous annuity to him after the experiment – if he will agree to live in comfort in the basement of Powyss’s estate, forgoing all human contact for a period of seven years. Poor laborer John Warlow, abusive husband and father of six children, takes Powyss up on his offer.
This experiment will go awry, of course. People will be damaged. It is how things go off the rails that holds the reader’s interest, along with tragic characterization. There is much here in the way of class struggle. Powyss, as landed gentry, is so out of touch with the laboring classes that he thinks to have the drunken, semi-literate Warlow while away the years enjoying carefully selected art, chuckling over Candide , playing a chamber organ, and journaling insightful notes on his captivity that Powyss can present to the Royal Society with his findings. The other occupants of the estate, from clever maids to disaffected gardeners, are not variables Powyss has considered, but greatly impact his “experiment” – as does Warlow’s wife. The differing perspectives, especially Warlow’s and Powyss’s, offer illumination of the monumental class divide and the ignorance of all parties when it comes to anything outside their own experience. The novel is even more fascinating in that it is based upon truth: the author was inspired by an advertisement for just such a “volunteer” in the 1797 Annual Register . Enlightenment is a painful (occasionally deadly) process in this well-written novel that features a convincing sense of historical atmosphere.
APPEARED IN
Share Book Reviews
Latest articles
Dive deeper into your favourite books, eras and themes:
Here are six of our latest Editor’s Choices:
Browse articles by tag
Browse articles by author, browse reviews by genre, browse reviews by period, browse reviews by century, browse reviews by publisher, browse reviews by magazine., browse members by letter, search members..
- Search by display name *
- Work & Careers
- Life & Arts
The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan — going underground
- The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan — going underground on x (opens in a new window)
- The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan — going underground on facebook (opens in a new window)
- The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan — going underground on linkedin (opens in a new window)
- The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan — going underground on whatsapp (opens in a new window)
Lucy Scholes
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
While perusing the Annual Register from 1797, Alix Nathan came across an entry regarding Mr Powyss, a country gentleman who offered a yearly stipend of £50, for the rest of their life, to any man who would live underground — in purpose-built “commodious apartments” — for seven years. The man would be provided with “every convenience desired” and served his meals from Powyss’ own table, but he must consent to live “without seeing a human face; and to let his toe and finger nails grow during the whole of his confinement, together with his beard”.
The entry explained that a man willing to undertake this strange trial had been found, a labourer with a large family, all of whom were being “maintained by Mr P”, and that he was currently in the fourth year of internment.
Fascinated by the account, Nathan wrote two short stories inspired by what little information she could find: one that tried to understand Powyss’ motives; the other exploring the point of view of the man underground. Expanding on her stories, The Warlow Experiment attempts to spin an entire world around this historical footnote.
It’s easy to understand Nathan’s interest in Powyss, whom she envisions as “a rich, atheistic bachelor who preferred plants to people”, and his human guinea pig — John Warlow, as she names him. But whereas the short stories offered evocative glimpses of these two lives, in this ambitious novel the larger story loses its focus and is bogged down in historical detail.
Surrounded by luxury, from his well-stocked library to the exotic plants and “newfangled” fruits he cultivates, Powyss dreams of making his mark as a man of science. On this point one can’t fault Nathan’s research; Powyss’ world is richly and memorably drawn.
Below stairs his servants, inspired by the cries of liberty, fraternity and equality from across the Channel, are reading Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man . Unfortunately much of the Enlightenment thinking is clumsily conveyed either in the form of one character’s tutelage of another, or by means of missives from Powyss’ Unitarian friend, a character whose only role is to depict the wider political and social context.
Powyss’ inappropriate interactions with Warlow’s wife soon muddy his experiment, just as the inclusion of her and other less interesting secondary characters muddies the novel. The overarching contrast between worlds of darkness and light is a promising one, and at her best Nathan is a perceptive, elegant writer, but ultimately this is a novel that doesn’t quite come together.
The Warlow Experiment , by Alix Nathan, Serpent’s Tail, RRP£12.99, 288 pages
Join our online book group on Facebook at FTBooksCafe . Listen and subscribe to Culture Call, a transatlantic conversation from the FT, at ft.com/culture-call or on Apple Podcasts
Promoted Content
Follow the topics in this article.
- Fiction Add to myFT
- Lucy Scholes Add to myFT
IMAGES
VIDEO