Each month on euradio, in Turning The Page, our team will be interviewing people from the book world.
The second part of our programme follows Little as her life takes a dramatic turn. Under the guidance of Dr Curtius, she travels to Paris, where his waxworks begin attracting attention from high society. Little’s unusual skills soon place her close to the very centre of power.
In Carey’s novel, the young wax modeller finds herself working for members of the French royal family, creating lifelike wax figures and death masks that capture both beauty and fragility. Among those she encounters is Princess Élisabeth, sister of King Louis XVI, whose first anatomy lesson—given by the young servant teaching her sculpture—reveals a startling truth: beneath titles and privilege, all human bodies are the same.
This episode explores Little’s arrival in Paris, her encounters with royalty, and the delicate, sometimes unsettling art of preserving faces in wax. As the world around her moves toward revolution, Little’s craft places her at the intersection of art, power, and mortality—foreshadowing the darker chapters of the story to come.
