Restoration-era playwright Aphra Behn (generally believed to be the first professional female writer and, as a consequence, was considered quite scandalous) awakens to discover three drunken people in her disordered parlor. She kicks one, her sometime lover John Hoyle.

It is the first day of rehearsals of her new play; first rehearsal is always chaos. This one is going to be particularly challenging because Aphra has agreed to allow the Earl of Rochester’s newest mistress, Elizabeth Decker, to play the heroine. Elizabeth is devoid of any acting talent, and Aphra fears she will doom the play to a single performance. Aphra, who was once sent to debtors’ prison, is often in financial straits. Unless the play runs for at least three performances, she will not be paid.

Aphra is determined to replace Elizabeth, but Rochester informs her that he has made a bet that Elizabeth will be the best actress on the London stage. In return for part of the winnings, Aphra agrees to work with Elizabeth and to engage an acting tutor for her.

Aphra is accosted by Elias Cavell, an old acquaintance she had not seen for many years. His brother Matthew arranged for Aphra’s father’s funeral for which she remembers him with gratitude. Elias informs her where Matthew presently resides and that he is in very poor health. When Aphra goes to call on him, she finds Matthew gruesomely stabbed to death.

Aphra enlists the aid of her friend, actress Nell Gwyn, one of King Charles’s mistresses, to improve Elizabeth’s acting ability. But first, she must arrange a funeral for Matthew with funds she does not have. Aphra tries to contact Elias to inform him of the funeral but is unable to locate him. It is Nell who finds Elias, also a murder victim, in Aphra’s “house of office” (aka “outhouse”).

Thus the stage is set for intertwining plots. Who has murdered Matthew and Elias Cavell and why? Are French spies trying to undermine the English monarchy? Will England be safe from the French stratagems? Will Monmouth, one of Charles’s illegitimate children, be successful in being named his father’s heir? Will the next king be Catholic or Protestant? Which one of the king’s mistresses is most in favor? Will Aphra succeed in banishing John Hoyle from her bed and her life? Who keeps breaking into her house? Will Elizabeth’s acting improve to the point that Rochester will win the bet? Will the play be a success? And what about Nell Gwyn’s sons’ tutor?

Not unlike a bawdy Restoration comedy with its split-second entrances and exits, the story weaves a multitude of characters (many of them real historical personages) and diverging plots into an overall design. There’s so much fun going on, but it’s not difficult to lose sight of the central mystery.

Aphra and Nell Gwyn, the main characters, are multi-dimensional. Their humor, their loyalties, their energy are vividly portrayed by the author. Less determined women would have been buried by the ruthless competition. They’re absolutely irresistible.

Readers will finish An Invitation to a Funeral with the feeling that they have actually spent a few entertaining hours in Restoration-era England. As England emerged from the repressive Puritan rule, it was a time of great literary achievement as well as superstition, treachery, ostentatious wealth, and abject poverty. Few historical novels provide such a candid view of the social, political, and sanitary conditions of the period. We can all hope that Ms. Brown will give us the opportunity to visit Aphra and the seventeenth century again.

--Lesley Dunlap