ASPIRING CHILD

Through a series of sonnets, Morrissey traces the early life and literary formation of Mary Shelley.

The book opens with the death of Shelley’s mother from sepsis 11 days postpartum. Morrissey describes how young Mary, raised by an emotionally absent father, frequently visited her mother’s grave, attempting to reconstruct her identity. “Stepmother tensions” led to the 14-year-old being sent to Dundee, Scotland, to live with another family. At 16, she entered an affair with Percy Bysshe Shelley, who abandoned his wife and children to be with her. The couple ended up broke and with Mary pregnant, but a small inheritance from Percy’s grandfather gave them a lifeline. Sadly, Mary’s “nameless” premature baby died 12 days after birth. She birthed but lost her second and third children, finally welcoming a “hardy” son in Florence. Other tragedies in Mary Shelley’s life include the suicides of her half sister and Percy’s wife. At 18, Mary Shelley started writing Frankenstein, which was published anonymously when she was 20. An ongoing love triangle between Percy, Mary, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire, tormented her until Percy drowned at sea. The collection concludes with the author envisioning young Mary Shelley in his class, “in back, quiet, gray-eyed like Athena. / Your eager need for knowledge unquelled. / Quite capable of capturing the world.” Morrissey presents an intense, sensitive character study of one of literature’s most revered writers. One of the collection’s strengths is its clear and chronological structure, which sheds light on the events that influenced Mary Shelley’s writing: “trauma was your co-author and / every pen-stroke bled shades of pain: / abandonment, withheld love, lost hope.” Another strength is the consistent voice—steady, restrained­—across 100 sonnets. Standout imagery appears in lines like how Mary’s mind “was its own sort / of powerful engine, fusing the ideas, / igniting electric sparks of imagination.” The second-person point of view, however, combined with too much telling and not enough showing, detracts from the reading experience.

An absorbing biography in sonnet form that could use more sensory details.