Monsters: The Passion and Loss that Created Frankenstein
ISBN13
9781783448029
Review published
29/04/2019
By Reviewer
Tanja
Star Rating
By Author / Illustrator
Sharon Dogar
Age range(s)
11+
Review
This ambitious third person narrative novel, written in the present tense, delves into the tragic life of Mary Shelley taking care to give voices to all the men [Godwin, Lord Byron, Hogg, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Polidori] and women who were players in this melodrama. The stories of Mary's mother Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary, her half-sister Fanny Imlay, her step sister and rival Claire Clairmont, her lover's wife Harriet Shelley and her Scottish friend Izy are told using a series of diary entries, letters, locations and recollections resembling the literary devices of Frankenstein. Dogar expertly explores the motivations of each character using her imagination and her instincts as a psychotherapist to enhance the dramatic tale gleaned from her research of the Shelley Archives in Oxford. The structure of Monsters distances the reader at first until they acclimatise themselves to the novel's interconnecting web of catastrophic events that led to the creation of a literary masterpiece. Beginning in 1812 when the 14-year-old Mary is exiled to Scotland because of her father William Godwin's mounting debts and ending in 1818 when Frankenstein is published, Monsters is an emotional rollercoaster of toxic relationships and traumatic episodes driven by characters who behave monstrously. Dogar paints a portrait of predatory, selfish and exploitative men whose behaviour is at odds with their free-thinking philosophy [William Godwin] and the sensitivity and beauty of their romantic poetry [Byron and Shelley]. Mary, plagued by guilt over her mother's death and bullied by her stepmother, is influenced by the writings of her parents and wants to passionately love and be intellectually stimulated without being judged. She is an impressionable 16-year-old when she elopes with the charismatic married Shelley [whom she is asked to entertain with conversation by her father, who wants financial gain] and who has been given the opportunity to charm, flatter, groom, seduce and emotionally blackmail her by using the memory of her dead mother. The wild, impetuous Claire wants release from a stultifying existence where she feels trapped by expectations. Fanny desires to be treated as Mary's equal and the pregnant Harriet longs for Shelley not to abandon her. Sympathy in this novel lies with the women who are manipulated, abandoned, dictated to and ruthlessly persecuted by a voyeuristic and hypocritical society dominated by patriarchal sensibilities. Children are collateral damage of imprudent affairs. It reflects Wollstonecraft's observation in A Vindication of the Rights of Women that 'A great proportion of the misery that wanders, in hideous forms, around the world, is allowed to rise from the negligence of parents.' Frankenstein, which celebrated its bicentenary last year, was not merely a response to a bet on a storm-tossed night in Lake Geneva but a narrative born from Mary's intense pain and loss. She described her novel as 'my hideous progeny' and at its heart is the devastation caused by desertion. Disgrace, penury, prejudice and suffering are recurring patterns in the girls' lives as Mary desperately struggles to cope with Percy's infidelities and tries to reconnect with her father. Reckless decisions and implacability leave a trail of destruction with Mary, Claire, Fanny and Harriet all caught in the crossfire. In later life Claire Clairmont denounced the concept of 'free love', describing Shelley and Byron as 'monsters of lying meanness, cruelty and treachery.' Monsters is an eventful read that explores the radical thinking and polyamorous lifestyle of Byron's set while providing an insight into the complex psyche of the key characters. Young girls become casualties of love and are a cautionary tale to teens today. Dogar speculates what may have been contained in the missing pages of Mary's diary and attempts to understand Percy's inner demons that compel him, [to borrow from Oscar Wilde], 'to kill the thing he loves'. Such themes will fascinate students studying the context of Mary Shelley's iconic gothic novel. 464 pages / Ages 14+ / Reviewed by Tanja Jennings, school librarian
