Mary cover art

Mary

Or the Birth of Frankenstein

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Mary

By: Anne Eekhout, Laura Watkinson - translator
Narrated by: Anna Burnett
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About this listen

There is a beast inside her, a monster. It wants to scream, it wants to tear things apart.

1816. Mary, 18 years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities, haunted by the loss of her baby daughter.

Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary.

Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits. And she encountered real monsters – both in the rocky wilds and far, far closer to home...

WARNING: CONTAINS GRAPHIC CONTENT

©2021 Original text © Anne Eekhout 2021 English translation © Laura Watkinson 2023. ‘Fairy Story’ (original: Sprookje’) by M. Vasalis from De vogel Phoenix © Van Oorschot 1949 (P)2023 Bolinda Publishing Biographical Fiction Genre Fiction Gothic Historical Horror Literature & Fiction Psychological Scary Fiction Biography Haunted Paranormal

Critic reviews

'A fantastically moody, unsettling novel, with a teasing, enigmatic atmosphere entirely its own.' (Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The Paying Guests and Fingersmith)
'A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel, which brings Mary Shelley back to life with a brilliant intensity.' (J.M. Miro, author of Ordinary Monsters)
'I was bewitched by this profound and pleasurable imagining of Mary Shelley and the birth of Frankenstein.' (Joanne Burn, author of The Hemlock Cure)
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This is so beautifully conceived and written that I shall buy a hard copy once it is available in paperback. I love the way she weaves in the imagined parts of Mary's teenage years into the genesis of the monster.
The narration could not be better. I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of this.

A wonderful tale

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It was fine, nothing startling good or bad. It was basically a sapphic teen romance that was framed by a story that would have been much more interesting.

The main bulk of the story was surrounding a relationship between 2 teen girls that didn’t lead anywhere and skirted over the main idea that there were so many inspiration points. Like some small comments about a laboratory and a mysterious man. One mention of electricity being used to reanimate corpses. It wasn’t really enough to link the Mary in Dundee to Mary Shelley the author of Frankenstein.

I understand that much of this story was pieced together from Mary’s own diaries but after all is said and done, it is a novel and some artistic licence could have been used to make Mr Booth more Victor Frankenstein like. Essentially, the main bulk of the story was an exploration of teen lesbian relationship. It wasn’t really the creation of Frankenstein. This part of the story could have been a fair novel. It could have just been a 19th century story. There was little need for us to know that Mary was anyone in particular. I think the authors had a responsibility to link plot points to Mary Shelley more.

The framing of a group trip to Europe would have been a much more interesting story if their goal was to delve into Mary Shelley. The whole focus on the dynamics of this liberal, polyamorous relationship between Mary, Percy, Albi and Claire would have been fascinating. Especially if instead of the flip flopping between the 2 stories, they flitted between the 4 characters and their feelings and thoughts about the situation. Mary and Claire especially had moments of angst that were barely touched on. It seems like a missed opportunity. Instead of writing a novel where we grow to feel for the characters and their inner turmoil, the authors have decided to slide into a strange story that in the end lead to nothing really.

There was a better story that was sidelined for what the author thought was either titillating or trendy but missed the mark.

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