Nina in Utopia / Hickling

Maddened with grief over the death of her young daughter, Victorian housewife Nina steps through a temporal wormhole and turns up in 21st-century London, where the streets are cleaner and the carriages horseless. Miranda Miller effectively conveys the unexpected wonder of Waitrose (“I can see how with the march of progress even an onion can evolve into a spherical masterpiece”), but the story becomes more engrossing when Nina slips back into her own time and is promptly committed to Bedlam – an institution undergoing radical change under the enlightened Dr Hood, who has abolished bars and restraints, although he “still performs cliterodectomies on women who persistently indulge in manualisation.” The delight of Miller’s narrative is in determining whether the heroine really is mad. If so, it’s infectious, as the lonely architect who rescues her in the present day is left to wonder if he too experienced a brain fever, or whether the slightly rank early Victorian corset abandoned in his living room is for real.