TRANCE BY APPOINTMENT
Gertrude Trevelyan
Boilerhouse Press

Trance by Appointment is the story of Jean, an otherwise ordinary working-class London girl. But Jean has what her mother calls “the Sight.” She sees what no one else can: the future. At first, under the patient guidance of Madame Eva, she learns to control this talent and begins to work as a fortune-teller. When Jean falls under the influence of Norman, an unscrupulous astrologer, she is exploited as a money-making machine, driven relentlessly to perform seances for exclusive clients. Norman treats Jean as a dumb animal with a uniquely saleable skill and subjects her to physical and emotional abuse in quest of profits. Telling Jean’s story through her eyes and words, Gertrude Trevelyan’s demonstrates an uncanny insight into the gift and curse of an exceptional power.

You know that as soon as I saw this book mentioned on Bluesky (? or was it IG?) I’d have to read it. You may recall that I reviewed another of their releases, Jane White’s unusual crime-ish Quarry, so their recovery of lost treasures has already piqued my interest. This one with its connection to my obsession with the spook racket made me mash the order button right away — even though I’m trying very hard not to buy books but to unload them! (I did manage an overall deficit at Oxfam this week, picking up two but divesting FIVE in return).

The design is terrific: not only the cover image (which is driving me nuts because I know I saw the original inspiration as part of an exhibition notice, maybe in California…but I can’t remember where! Probably saw on IG) but the whole packaging by Louise Aspinall).

As a writer very influenced by the early modernists mode like Virginia Woolf, Trevelyan captures that stream-of-consciousness brilliantly, which offers a great sense of wonder in Jean’s childhood, where she cannot see the difference between what she perceives of a magical world and what others see. It is so obvious after all, but her mother soon figures it out because she knows, too.

It’s fascinating this edge between the desire to sacralise ‘the Sight’ or to monetise it — and never anything else. It’s either too good to use or to good to pass up. There’s no desire to understand it, which of course is so true to life. The horrors of her first job in a kiosk outside the tube station: the sensory overwhelm not only of the noise and the people but their intrusive thoughts and worries and anxieties sicken the teenager who has no idea how to protect herself from being open to the input of the world around her.

You don’t have to be psychic to need that.

Of course her psychic gifts lead to being put to work with a local clairvoyant who tries to teach her the trade until Madame Eva sees that Jean has something more than the regular adaptability to telling people their fortunes. Fatally, she confides in her ‘colleague’ — the smarmy ‘Professor’ Norman Mitch, who sees in her a cash cow beyond his horoscopes and the mitt racket. Carriage trade by way of séances! He seduces the young woman and then sets her up with regular showings of her talent by way of the little girl Daisy who takes over in the trances.

But who is Daisy really? And what happens when the physical demands of motherhood encroach on the carefully orchestrated business model? Doubts creep in and Jean begins to wonder what really happens when she surrenders control.

Between chapters Trevelyan gives snapshots of other places, other voices where psychics meet customers; sometimes just dialogue, sometimes with an omniscient narrator capturing the action as well as the words. The trade on the whole gives more than a whiff of desperation on both sides of the table, squalid rooms and well-handled coins.

Trevelyan captures the world well through Jean’s eyes, from her family’s struggles during her childhood to her own frustrations after the initial excitement with all Norman promises her. The gift is hedged around with so many rules and yet none of them help her recover the wonder she first knows is there.

See the official launch event here.

Buy the book here or get your local shop to order it.

EDIT: gracias Neglected Books for identifying the photo of Nelly Muley!