Stuart Gibbs

Cosima Unfortunate, Steals A Star by Laura Noakes Laura Noakes’ debut book Cosima Unfortunate Steals A Star is a bright historical romp full of incident, mystery and suspense featuring a cast of colourful characters. Set in the late 19th century, the author draws on her background as a historian to explore the harsh reality of disabled children during the 1890s. Many resided in institutions such as the Industrial School for Girls or the Home for Incurable Children in London. The book’s central character, Cosima – or Cos to her friends – is a resident of the Home for Unfortunate Girls, an institution designed to segregate the disabled from the rest of society, supposedly for their own good. Cos attempts along with her friends Mary, Diya and Pearl to brighten their grim existence with a series of japes against the Home’s tyrannical matrons Miss Stain and her older Brother. The story opens with an attempted heist of cakes intended for Miss Stain’s wealthy patrons. The heist, however, goes disastrously wrong, but this leads the friends into a series of adventures which involve Aggie the lady engineer, Miles a magician come artful dodger and Lord Francis Fitzroy the explorer and organizer of the Empire Exhibition. The exhibition is designed to present many of Fitzroy’s ‘discoveries’ which include the impressive star diamond. Fitzroy has an interest in adopting the residents of the Home for Unfortunate Girls and suspecting that would be bad, Cos and her friends attempt to find out why. They also hatch a plan to get them out of their terrible conditions, a heist of Fitzroy’s jewels including the star diamond from the Empire Exhibition. Laura Noakes draws on her own experience, her main character Cos has her own disability, Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder, and many of the issues surrounding this condition are brought out in her character. The supporting characters are also well-drawn as they come up with ingenious solutions to circumnavigate a hostile environment. Besides disability, Cosima Unfortunate also poses philosophical questions about the concept of theft and the reappropriation of culture and cultural items. There is also a brief reference to Francis Galton who had developed the doctrine of eugenics. During the period the story is set Galton was busily promoting this ‘idea’ as mainstream science an interesting real-life backdrop to the story of Cos with the book tackling the impact of pseudo-science. This story is ideal entertainment for children and young adults (or just plain adults) but it would work well in the school environment serving as a companion piece for the History or Social Studies class like J.T. Williams’ The Lizzie and Belle Mysteries or Phillip Pulman’s Sally Lockhart series. All in all, it is an impressive debut.