WHEN A BOOK refuses to shy away from squalor and brutality while venerating the passionate and beautiful, it is always a memorable experience - "The Crimson Petal and the White," by Michel Faber; "The Poisonwood Bible," by Barbara Kingsolver; "Fingersmith," by Sarah Waters. Joining this list of haunting novels is Elizabeth Macneal's unapologetically lush debut, "The Doll Factory," which will doubtless prove as much of an obsession for its readers as the art model Iris Whittle is to the men around her. The entrancing Iris and her smallpoxdisfigured twin sister, Rose, toil endlessly at painting the faces of dolls aping real children from daguerreotypes (guessing whether these children are dead or alive is one of the few games to brighten their day's drudgery). iris yearns to make her own way as a painter and is fast losing hope when an artist named Louis Frost begs her to become his new muse. Iris accepts, but only after Louis agrees to tutor her. As she learns her craft - and the secrets held by her dashing new instructor - Iris imagines her life could be one of ardor and fulfillment. But when a curiosity collector named Silas Reed forms a sinister attachment to her, Iris is faced with dangers beyond the scope of her nightmares. Silas, a taxidermist, resembles Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, the perfumer from Patrick Stiskind's 1986 novel "Perfume: The Story of a Murderer." Both men are sadistic erotomaniacs; both are also isolated artistes who crave worship while detesting their worshipers. Jean-Baptiste comes to understand his own abhorrence of humankind only after he has fooled an entire town into performing a literal orgy of adoration for him. Likewise, the closer Silas comes to real individuals, the more repulsed he grows. An assignation with a prostitute whose vibrant red hair reminds him of Iris begins with tenderness, turns to gleeful violence, then fizzles to disgust when he learns her tresses are dyed. Silas's compassion extends to himself alone. "Even in the dim candlelight, he can see specks of blood on the sheets, a maggot-shaped indentation where the girl must curl up at night," Macneal writes. "He sees himself through her eyes: his benevolence in visiting her, a far better prospect than the factory scabs she must service." The best villains are terrifying not because they are monstrous, but because they are fiercely human - and who among us has not wanted to feel charitable, or beloved? Unlike Stiskind's ripe fantasy fable, Macneal's immersive epic stays firmly rooted in historical fact, inviting comparison to Erik Larson and "The Devil in the White City," his account of both the 1893 World's Fair and the serial murderer H. H. Holmes. Macneal is clearly engrossed in the Pre-Raphaelite movement and especially in the plight of women who were churned through the gristmill of poverty and spat out again. There is hardly an aspect of Victorian London that she has not mastered, from art history to guttersnipe slang to the types of leashes fashionable heiresses preferred for their lap dogs (velvet). People who scoff at "Pride and Prejudice" and "Jane Eyre" may belittle "The Doll Factory," with its strong whiff of fairy-tale romanticism. Ignore them. Iris is a dreamer, and dreamers are inherently romantic. "If men can make this, if they can encase elm trees and conquer nature on this scale," she thinks of the Great Exhibition, "then what might she be capable of?" Finding out the answer is both a harrowing and a bewitching adventure. LYNDSAY FAYE'S latest book, "The Paragon Hotel," was published in January.

In London, 1850, porcelain-doll painter Iris' family disowns her for leaving the oppressive but respectable doll shop to become an artist's model. Her coworker and twin sister, Rose, deformed in her teens by smallpox, feels especially betrayed. Meanwhile, taxidermist and curiosity-shop owner Silas nurses an obsession for Iris and her own deformity, a bent collarbone. In the build-up to and shadow of the 1851 Great Exhibition and Royal Academy show, love grows between Iris and Pre-Raphaelite painter Louis; Iris tastes true freedom and determinedly pursues her own painting; and Silas finalizes plans for capturing his most prized specimen. Talented debut novelist Macneal drops readers right into a Victorian London that's home to stinking squalor and chaos, but also significant beauty and possibility. Midway through, readers won't know if they're holding a romance, tragedy, or murder mystery, but won't pause long enough to wonder about it as Iris rails against the limitations of her gender and social status, and Silas' creepiness comes into sharp focus. (There's also a marriage scandal, and a gold-hearted street urchin.) This terrifically exciting, chiaroscuro novel became an instant bestseller in England, with TV rights already sold, and will jolt, thrill, and bewitch U.S. readers, too.--Annie Bostrom Copyright 2019 Booklist

MacNeal's lively debut finds a fresh way to dramatize the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood of revolutionary, mid-19th-century British painters. In addition to William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, MacNeal creates a fictitious PRB member, Louis Frost, who meets Iris Whittle, the heroine, a painter of miniature faces at Mrs. Salter's Doll Emporium. Dismissed for being a woman, Iris longs to be seen as a real painter, and when she meets Frost, he proposes a deal: if she poses for him, he will give her art lessons. At the same time, Iris also comes to the attention of Silas Reed, a taxidermist who sells stuffed animals to artists as props for their paintings. Unbeknownst to Iris, he stalks her with the intention of possessing her like an object . Louis turns out to be a generous mentor and Iris ends up falling for him. Only Albie, a light-fingered street urchin befriended by Iris, is aware of how much danger she is in from the obsessed Silas. Told against the backdrop of the Great Exposition at the Crystal Palace and its industrial wonders, MacNeal's consistently enjoyable novel reads like an art history lecture co-delivered by Wilkie Collins and Charles Dickens and read from a revisionist feminist script. This debut is a blast; it enticingly vacillates between a realistic depiction of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's London and lurid Victorian drama. (Aug.)