In Perry's story, Melmoth was one of the women who went to Jesus' tomb and found that it was empty, and that Christ had risen.
Melmoth centers on the idea of witnesses, as indicated by that crucial first word - Look! - which tolls through the novel like a bell. Soon, he disappears, and Helen begins seeing traces of a dark figure following her.
She is hurrying through Prague at night when she is stopped by Karel, a friend who appears disheveled and erratic, like Coleridge's mad speaker in Kubla Khan, about whom watchers say, "Beware! Beware! / His flashing eyes, his floating hair!" He shows her a collection of papers concerning the existence of a creature called Melmoth the Witness. of self-punishment, of self-hatred, carried out quietly and diligently and with a minimum of fuss." Sarah Perry's new novel, Melmoth, opens with an imperative: " Look!" The object of our gazes is Helen Franklin, 42, "small, insignificant, having about her an air.
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