At times, however, the voice of the narrator who describes herself at the outset as “a plain-speaking woman” and promises to “tell my story plainly” varies unhelpfully. Sally's analysis of what underlies Duff Gordon's lack of “empathy” smacks more of 20th-century psychology than the 1860s. Elsewhere, she displays a susceptibility to be shocked and re-shocked by her mistress's repeated and consistent rejection that seems to belong to some other, less astute person.
For me, The Mistress of Nothing soars only when Sally – and Kate Pullinger – break altogether from the clutches of Lucie Duff Gordon and the fetters of the historical record. The final, speculative section, in which Sally defies her ladyship's orders and attempts instead to use her knowledge of Arabic and her now-outcast status to make a life for herself and her child in Cairo, is gritty, moving, and utterly believable. Perhaps that's not only because the author has been liberated from the tyranny of what really happened, but also because the reader – this reader, anyway – has been liberated too.
Of course, it was the “really happened” aspect of this story of a famous lady and her maid that piqued Pullinger's curiosity to begin with and makes its unusual aspects all the more extraordinary. However, knowing that only some of the novel's events are based on fact kept me wondering: Which ones? Was the real-life Sally so willing to share Omar with his other wife? (Katherine Frank suggests not.) Did Lady Duff Gordon really dismiss her maid without references or severance pay? (No, according to a letter to her husband.) With a roman à clef, as Beevor suggests, a reader would have less reason to quibble and less compulsion to consult the record.
Still, in making the choice to go with real names and then play fast and loose with the facts, Pullinger has set herself a challenge that also pays rich dividends. The remarkable life of Lucie Duff Gordon deserves renewed attention, and Pullinger's novel about this unconventional literary figure's even more unconventional maid yields some moving narrative which, whether factual or not, rings utterly true.
Erika Ritter's most recent non-fiction work, The Dog by the Cradle, the Serpent Beneath: Some Paradoxes of Human-Animal Relationships, also deals with the sometimes contradictory realms of historical fact, treasured assumptions and plausible speculation.
