‘Elijah’s Mermaid is Essie Fox’s second Victorian novel. Her first, The Somnambulist was featured on the Channel 4 TV Book Club and was shortlisted for the Debut novel of the year in the National Book Awards, 2012. Elijah’s Mermaid is a novel that exposes the hypocrisy in the worlds of high art and literature: a world of obsessions and sordid betrayals where nothing is quite what it seems to be.’