It is significant that this moment of discovery brings pain as well as joy for Mathilda, since the novel is not in any way an uncritical celebration of a queer, hedonistic past. Looking at the 'excruciation of coil and kink' makes her 'ache with jealousy and bliss'. Mathilda is overwhelmed at this discovery of a Black person with natural hair, in a photo taken in a noncolonial context. But the excitement she feels at this discovery is nothing compared to the unearthing of a photo of a Black woman at a 1920s bohemian party, dressed in an elaborate costume as a Late Renaissance angel, with her hair 'brushed into a commanding nimbus'. When Mathilda comes across a photo of Stephen Tennant hand in hand with his lover Siegfried Sassoon, Mathilda is so overcome that she lies down on the floor.

She asserts that 'a day’s immersion' in the black and white photographs in the archive 'left the same mental after-dazzle as a sun-glanced afternoon, lakeside.' Although she claims to be writing a book about these figures, Mathilda’s interest is less academic than emotional. As the novel opens, Mathilda has acquired a volunteer position at the National Portrait Gallery Archive, sorting through interwar photographs of the people known as the Bright Young Things. The remainder of Mathilda’s time is spent plotting her survival, as well as her 'Escape', when her living situations become untenable. Mathilda devotes her days to reading about and researching these Transfixions, some of whom are real historical figures, while others are von Reinhold’s invention. For example, the silver transfixion card for the aesthete and socialite Stephen Tennant, written 'in shell coloured ink (barely legible)', records that Tennant evokes the sensation of 'silver wafer into lead-white paste, soundless string instruments involving beeswax in their production'. She records details of the lives of these people on cards, recording on the back the sensations they inspire in her. Most of the novel is told in the first person by Mathilda Adamarola, a Black, queer, working-class woman who dedicates her life to the avoidance of paid employment, to the pursuit of idleness and luxury, and to immersing herself in recovering the lives of Black and/or queer historical figures whom she calls her 'Transfixions'.

Hermia druitt