Norman’s Who Is Anna Stenberg? operates productively within a well-established Victorian adventure tradition while introducing elements — the supernatural, gender performance, the investigation into maternal loss — that complicate its generic affiliations in interesting ways.
The protagonist’s Viktor disguise is the novel’s most theoretically rich element, raising questions about identity construction and female agency in Victorian social contexts. The mystery of Anna’s identity is more conventionally handled, though competently so.
The supernatural register shifts the tonal balance in the second half in ways that Norman handles skillfully. A promising, well-crafted piece of Victorian genre fiction.
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