Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein (US) / Mary: Or, the Birth of Frankenstein (UK)
This impressionistic novel tracks the influences that led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. It takes place in two timelines: Cologny, Switzerland, in 1816, where Mary Shelley famously writes her novel at age nineteen, and Dundee, Scotland in 1812, where she stays with the family of a radical philosopher and befriends his daughter Isabella. In both settings, her companions challenge each other to tell stories, which leads her to do what writers do: make connections, find meaning, dream, and imagine.
In Dundee, Mary engages in a complicated relationship with Isabella, who invites Mary into her private world of superstition and monsters. In Cologny, Mary; her baby William; Mary’s partner and William’s father, Percy Shelley; Mary’s stepsister Claire; the poet Lord Byron; and the doctor and writer John Polidori spend a stormy summer writing, talking, and drinking laudanum. Mary is preoccupied with her lover Percy, who is flirting, or maybe more, with her stepsister, and she is haunted by the memory of her baby daughter’s death. It is here that she begins to write her novel, which allows her to purge the feelings of grief and rage that have been building for years.
It is a complicated task to portray a dreamy writer’s mental life, but Anne Eekhout succeeds. This is not a novel packed with action; rather, the drama comes from Mary’s unusual imagination and what she makes of what happens. Eekhout’s writing, as translated by Laura Watkinson, conveys the somber, gloomy mood Mary often carries, and convincingly sets up the conditions that lead to the creation of Frankenstein.
