An audio book.
We learn about Mary when she's at Geneva in 1816 with Shelley, Byron, Dr John Polidori and her stepsister Claire. Shelley's into free love. She isn't. Her daughter died. She now has a little boy, William, still breast-feeding. Byron challenges them to write a ghost story.
We also see her at Scotland in 1812 when she was in her mid-teens, staying with the Baxter family. She has a skin condition. She's friendly (intimate) with Isabella, whose mother has died. Isabella's into witches, ghosts and sea monsters. While they're out together they see a humanoid beast (or was it a shared hallucination?). It's rumoured that the local brewer, Mr Booth (who'd been married to Isabella's sister, who died) conducts experiments on life. Mary's warned about Isabella - is she a witch?
She's familiar with Gothic horror stories and Galvani's frog experiments. Mary's famous mother died days after Mary was born. At the end she leave Scotland in one time-line (her skin better, Isabella planning to marry Mr Booth, abandoning Mary) and leaves Geneva in the other timeline (Shelley's father will provide support only if she returns). Claire is pregnant. Byron's likely to be the father but maybe Shelley could be. Her Frankenstein story has barely been started.
Lots of sections seem slow to me. It feels like the majority of the text is involved with the Scotland scenario. I don't mind the lack of action, it's the psychological/character development that stalls.
Other reviews
- Isabela Torezan (What I found most beautiful in this story, though, was not the delicate description of Mary’s love life, from Isabella to Percy, or the sad but surely moving portrait of motherhood. For me, it is Mary’s salvation through writing, the way she realises that her story, her monster, her writing powers were what made her who she was and nobody could take that from her. Writing, alone, makes her a woman, a mother, and a living being)
- theresasmithwrites (The scenes at Geneva read almost like a fever dream, an immersion into the way in which they were all drinking heavily, laudanum mixed with wine, the consequential heightening of everyone’s faculties, and the raging storms all converging into a highly charged atmosphere. )
- Liesbeth D’Hoker (Unfortunately, her straightforward style leaves too little of Mary’s complex mind unturned. ... Her superficial dialogues and explanatory one-liners render a reductive image of a woman who is a victim of her time, of her context, and of the men who surround her. Eekhout’s poor style also prevents the creation of a layered and intellectual character. At times the syntax is of toe-curling simplicity ... Eekhout deviates from the biographical facts on several important points ... It is also quite clever how Eekhout plays with different genres. She mixes coming-of-age passages with horror stories and folk legends and concocts strange scenes that soar with tension. Much less successful are the passages that she overwhelms with psychological platitudes)
- Ray Palen
