This was a bail...
This was the first book I've read in my Mary Shelley obsession and I'm sad to say it was a flop for me. Try as I might, I just couldn't do it.
The author has written a biography on Mary Shelley here and has obviously done some research into her life, but the fact that he decided to write the book from her point of view is extremely disorienting.
I just feel like there are things in the book that she would never say and things that are not true to the times of the era in which she lived.
I give the author full marks for bravery in his attempt to channel the great Mary Shelley, but unfortunately, I'll pass on this one. ( )

This was quite a disappointment. Or maybe I've just read too many novels based on Mary Shelley's life and/or the creation of her novel. The author posits that Mary was sexually abused as a young girl, first by her stepbrother's "games" (that she inevitably lost and had to pay penalties of increasing sexual intimacy) and also by her overly affectionate father, who frequently comments on her resemblance to his dead wife. When her stepmother blames her for her "filthy" behavior, she is sent to live with a family in Scotland, the Baxters, where the widowed father will serve as her tutor and his two daughters as her friends and role models. The high point of Baxter's education is taking Mary to see the birth of a two-headed calf, born from the union of mother and son, as a warning to Mary that her relations with her own father could be disastrous, both biologically and socially. Ashamed, Mary returns home but repulses her father's kisses and offers to sit on his lap. It is as much this breech as her own passion that causes her to run off to the Continent with Percy Shelley. Her stepsister Claire and threatens to reveal her plans if she is not taken along. And thus begins the famous menage a trois.

This was all new info to me, and it's unclear whether this was based on fact or mere speculation by the author. But from this point out, I got even more bored than I already was. The travels through France, Italy, and Switzerland were old hat, and the tedious pages and pages of philosophical discussions (intended, I am sure, to show their brilliance) came off as silly and insignificant. The visit to Byron's villa was, again, old hat, and the story of how Mary came to write Frankenstein was what you already know if you've read any introductions to the novel.

If you want to read a really good, original novel on this subject, I recommend Passion: A Novel of the Romantic Poets and the Women Who Loved Them by Jude Morgan. Skip this one. ( )