Mary's Monster by Lita Judge
New York : Roaring Brook Press, 2018.
312 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
I finally got around to reading Frankenstein back in 2011, and - after reading this fine book - I want to read it again! The reason is indicated in this book's full title Mary's Monster: Love, Madness, and How Mary Shelley created Frankenstein.
Judge's book is an superb retelling of the courage, grit and brilliance of the young Mary Shelly with a focus on the years that lead to her creation of the classic novel, Frankenstein, published in 1818. The author tells the well-researched story in easy free verse that moves the story along at a breathless clip. We see Mary Shelly live the shock of her widowed father's remarriage to a very unlikable stepmother, her surprisingly lovely exile from family to an extended family in Scotland, and then her return and scandalous elopement with the already married Percy Bysshe Shelley - a passionate but troubled Romantic Poet.
It is during a Swiss exile with Percy and Byron that she begins writing her masterpiece. The success of this biography is that it is able to create a very clear narrative out of the tumultuous time that Mary Shelly wrote the novel. During the period covered she leaves home, returns, leaves, has two daughters who die and one son who survives, marries, is widowed, and sees her controversial novel become famous.
Additionally, the book is illustrated with evocative (haunting) illustrations of which the cover featured here is one.
I would definitely recommend this book to students. It humanizes famous authors and makes their painful and passionate lives very real and very compelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment