Financial Times reviewer Susie Mesure gave Pixie a rave review!
‘All the best novelists are magicians, conjuring people from the printed page, but some, like Jill Dawson, are particular masters of the occult: bringing figures hidden from history to life. In Pixie, her engrossing 11th novel, Dawson’s forgotten focus is the occult artist Pamela Colman Smith. Despite illustrating the world’s best-selling tarot cards in 1909, Colman Smith’s name was omitted from what is still widely known as the Rider-Waite deck. In Pixie — the title comes from a nickname bestowed by Pamela’s supporter and friend, the actor Ellen Terry — Dawson fleshes out a fascinating protagonist. The cover alone is glorious: a floral-frocked woman brandishing a paintbrush and a quill beneath a glowing sun, a tiny Doctor Bird, endemic to Jamaica, hovering nearby. The image is based on Colman Smith’s original artwork, which reminds WB (“Willie”) Yeats, one of many famous figures to pepper Pixie’s world, of an “innocent Aubrey Beardsley”, writes Dawson. Dawson paints a picture of a fiercely ambitious, feminist protagonist who wants nothing less than to become a ‘Famous Lady Artist’
‘As with Dawson’s previous novels, which tackled subjects as varied as 16th-century witchcraft (The Bewitching), Lord Lucan’s murdered nanny Sandra Rivett (The Language of Birds) and Patricia Highsmith (The Crime Writer), Pixie is meticulously researched. This inspires confidence in those elements of Colman Smith’s biography with which Dawson takes liberties. For a tarot novice (like me), everything in Pixie will be a revelation. But this illuminating work of herstorical fiction should ensure this collection of cards is henceforth known as the Rider-Waite-Smith deck, both cementing Colman Smith’s legacy and underscoring Dawson’s reputation as a writer of considerable talent.’
Read the full review here