There are many threads here but a few that caught up my attention were those that reminded me of other books.

The narrator, Tomaso Labella recalls [b:The Great Gatsby|4671|The Great Gatsby|F. Scott Fitzgerald|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1428718059s/4671.jpg|245494]'s Nick Carraway.

The depiction of class and community responses to spiritualism reminds me a bit of [b:The Fountain Overflows|103603|The Fountain Overflows|Rebecca West|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320522143s/103603.jpg|99891] .

The juxtaposition of English and European, male and female responses to the spiritualist herself were some of the best in the book. The way male scientists wanted to own or disown, credit or discredit the spiritualist herself reminded me a bit of the treatment of Mary Anning in [b:Remarkable Creatures|6457081|Remarkable Creatures |Tracy Chevalier|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1327161912s/6457081.jpg|6647405] and [b:Curiosity|18420096|Curiosity|Joan Thomas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1410776889s/18420096.jpg|11165855].