The World Before Us is Aislinn Hunter's haunting novel of trauma, loss, history and memory set in a Victorian asylum and a quirky London museum. Jane was fifteen when her life changed for ever. In the woods surrounding a Yorkshire country house, she took her eyes off the little girl she was minding and the girl slipped into the trees never to be seen again. Now an adult, Jane is obsessed with another disappearance: that of a young woman who walked out of a Victorian lunatic asylum one day in 1877. As Jane pieces together moments in history, forgotten stories emerge of sibling jealousy, illicit affairs, and tragic death ''Ambitious, inticate cleverly innovates while tipping a nod to classic Gothic tropes: dynastic rivalries, crumbling country houses, madhouses and vanished girls'' National Post.
