MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN

A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Mary Shelley’s masterpiece, Frankenstein.

Shelley’s writing of the now-classic gothic novel—featuring a scientist whose experiments unwittingly create a monstrous life form—occurred, remarkably, while she was still a teenager. Eekhout explores the 18-year-old author’s actions during the summer of 1816, when she and Percy Bysshe Shelley, her poet husband, traveled to Switzerland with a coterie of fellow authors and family members. Spurred to write a ghost story by an impromptu contest among members of the group (which also included Lord Byron) to enliven the dreary and stormy summer, Shelley began the work that is often considered the first English-language science-fiction novel. Interwoven with the story of the summer of 1816 are Shelley’s imagined recollections of time spent in 1812 with family acquaintances in Dundee, Scotland, during a sojourn to restore her ailing health. There, the imaginative and sensitive girl forms an intimate friendship with Isabella Baxter, another restive and motherless teen, and the two embark on a monthslong intense and mercurial relationship. Encouraged by the Baxter family’s love of storytelling, and with access to more sources of creepy fables, folklore, and myth than she enjoyed at home in London, Shelley entertains (with the companionship and encouragement of Isabella) more and more of her fervid imaginings. The girls’ fever dream of a summer together is marked by sexual longing and exploration as well as Mary’s growing awareness of the roles of reality and unreality in narrative. Translated from the Dutch by Watkinson, this novel includes a translator’s note with a nod to the role of imagination in filling the gaps left by history books.

Creative confirmation of Shelley’s position as the mother of all goth girls.