Mistaken Identity

First, a warning: I am about to ruin a book for you. So if you happen to be a long-time fan of Ann-Marie MacDonald — the celebrated author and playwright of Fall on Your Knees and Hamlet-911, among others — and you plan to read Fayne, please just skip over these paragraphs. Although Fayne is an unsettling page-turner from its very opening lines, what’s most remarkable about it is what’s not being said. Penguin Random House Canada presents this novel as a “tale of science, magyk, love, and identity” rather than describing it accurately as the historical gender thriller that it is. The vast difference between the marketing copy and what the book actually achieves means that to review Fayne is to wreck it.

The plot opens in 1887, when Charlotte Bell receives a unique birthday gift for a girl of twelve: a tutor. Education was usually denied to...