Step into the hauntingly beautiful world of The Midnight Carousel,
a spellbinding debut by Fiza Saeed McLynn. From a grief-stricken
carousel-maker in 1900s Paris to the glamour of 1920s Chicago,
this novel weaves together mystery, obsession, and love across
time. When a magical carousel resurfaces – bringing both wonder
and danger – it threatens to unravel the dreams of those drawn to
it. Inspired by real-life secrets and shaped by Fiza’s’s experience
as a bereavement counsellor, this richly atmospheric story is perfect
for fans of Water for Elephants and Moulin Rouge. A must-read for
those who love immersive historical fiction.
This novel is a work of fiction, but it takes inspiration from several real-life stories. Can you tell us about some of these stories, and why it was important to you to include them?
I was striving for authenticity, and I think that weaving in real life events makes the fictional parts more convincing. Although the storyline isn’t exactly the same, the book is influenced by a family secret that I stumbled upon a few years ago; for decades, all of us believed that my great grandmother, Ada, had died in 1918 of a broken heart six weeks after her husband was killed in an omnibus accident. But when I was delving into our family tree, I discovered that Ada had lived for another eleven years, hospitalised for most of that time after suffering a nervous breakdown. No living family member has any idea who concocted the cover story, but the idea that shame can affect the following generations became a really interesting idea to me. Having effectively lost both of his parents when he was six years old, Ada’s son (my grandfather, Walter) was placed in an orphanage, then later trained up and put into service as a footman in an English mansion where he met my grandmother, one of the maids. Including snippets of their lives was a way that I could feel close to these family members, some of whom I never even met.
You have twelve years’ experience as a bereavement counsellor. How did your experiences of working with the grieving shape the story?
I actually didn’t set out to specifically help the bereaved, but when I was running my therapy practice, I found that most people coming to me for help were consumed by grief, even if they were unaware of it. And often, that grief was complicated by feelings of guilt, regret, and resentment. So, I wanted the characters in my book to reflect the different ways of experiencing and coping with a loss; suffering from invasive thoughts that loop around and around (similar to the motion of a carousel), or entirely avoiding the emotion, or something in-between.
What do you hope that readers take away from reading The Midnight Carousel?
The resilience of the human spirit. People experience heartbreak, suffering, loss, and yet, still they carry on. And how amazing is that?
The Midnight Carousel is on shelves now.
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