An interesting read based on the life of Mary Shelley around the period she created Frankenstein. Modern themes such as sexism are touched upon, especially as an author in a time dominated by men. Lots of the issues covered are still very relevant today, it’s interesting well paced and well written. It keeps you turning the pages and wanting to read more. I really enjoyed this but I would say it’s more of a historical fiction book. A great read.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

It’s always tricky to fictionalise the lives of well known writers – especially the romantics who don’t fit into neat boxes – but Doger has done well with her interpretation of Mary Shelley nee Godwin and her sister Jane, and their complicated relationship with Percy Bysshe Shelley. Largely the characters are allowed to remain complicated and the more unsavoury parts aren’t tidied up beyond recognition. Leading from first love and the idea of the bohemian lifestyle and liberty, through great loss and eventually to the creation of the first work of Science Fiction and one of the greatest gothic novels in the Year without a Summer, at Villa Diodati. An interesting take and a good read.

I have a confession to make: I'm not sure I've ever read Frankenstein all the way through. I think I tried, once? But I just... didn't quite get there. Or if I *did* finish it, I don't remember doing so. Despite that, I've read a couple of books about Mary Shelley or with Frankenstein as a repeated motif, which is making me think I really ought to make a second attempt some time and this time, stick with it to the end. By all accounts it's a remarkable piece of work.

While I was vaguely aware of some of the details of Mary Shelley's life, particularly where they overlapped with Percy Shelley and Byron, they were just that: vague. And while I obviously know who Mary Wollstonecraft was, I knew shamefully little about her as a person before reading this. So this helped to fill in some of the blanks for me, and allowed me to understand how Mary Shelley's life, family, and circumstances led to her creating Frankenstein.

(Obviously, I imagine there's some poetic license in there, so it would be remiss to take the whole book as historical fact, but it seems like a good starting point.)

In terms of really understanding the complicated relationships between the characters, I felt it was a convincing read, and kept me surprisingly gripped towards the end -- which led to me staying up way too late to finish it. That's despite the fact that I never fully chimed with the writing style; it took me quite a long time to adjust to, and I wasn't at all sure that present tense was quite right for the story, but maybe that's just me.

In some ways, though, I probably enjoyed it more as a historical introduction / biography than as a novel. What I got out of it was a more detailed understanding of Mary Shelley's life, rather than any particular emotional connection to these figures as *characters*. As it's a period I know nothing about, it's impossible for me to judge how accurate it is on those terms, but it seemed to have a lot of research backing it up. I'd be interested to read more and understand how many of the letters and other written fragments are genuine or extrapolated from existing material, and how many are completely the author's creation.

I think if I were to pick up Frankenstein now, I'd read it very differently than I would have done without reading this first. So it's had a lasting impact on me, but not necessarily as a novel; more as a very gentle, accessible piece of historical literary criticism, or something. If that even makes sense.

I'll try and write a more coherent review of this for my blog closer to the February publication date of this book -- I'm planning to end my extended hiatus eventually. But for now, you get this. tl;dr, I mostly enjoyed the book, and I learned something from it. More accurate rating: 3.5*.

Thanks to Penguin Random House UK and NetGalley for providing me with an Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

This novel follows the early life of Mary Godwin (Mary Shelley to be) and Percy Bysshe Shelley as well as some of their more well-known family members and friends such as Claire Clairmont and Lord Byron. This book is based on the lives of real historical figures who have been dead for nearly 200 years and many of the events of their fascinating lives are relatively well known, particularly as there has recently been a Mary Shelley movie starring Elle Fanning. With that in mind there may be some light spoilers in this review.

Anyone familiar with this cast of characters knows that fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction. The real-life drama of Mary Godwin and Bysshe Shelley is surprisingly mirrored in our celebrity obsessed modern times, their actions were considered the height of scandal at the time and you really couldn’t make up some of the events they experienced.

The novel begins with a young Mary Godwin, the daughter of writer Mary Wollstonecraft, living with her father, her sister Fanny and her step-mother and step-sister. Mary has a tense relationship with her step-mother and resents her influence over her father. Mary’s mother died shortly after she was born but she feels a strong connection to her and her beliefs, and Mary frequently visits her grave to commune with her. As events progress, she meets the young poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and the rest as they say, is history. The events of the novel take us from England, Scotland, France and Switzerland and cover Mary’s life from approximately age 15 until shortly after she publishes Frankenstein at age 20.

The story starts off a little slow with some domestic drama, mopey visits to the graveyard and slightly inane conversations between the Godwin siblings (lots of exclamation marks, my pet hate) but really picks up once Mary meets (the very much married) Bysshe. They are intellectually matched and their passion for one another is tangible and their relationship as two infatuated teenagers is utterly believable. Bysshe, an avowed atheist believes in free love (polyamory essentially) and both Mary and her sisters quickly fall under his spell, in particular Jane, who chooses to join Mary and Bysshe in their self-imposed exile from England. Suffice to say 17th century was not quite ready for a married man to shack up with two very young teenage girls.

Lots of themes are explored in this book including sexism and the double standards in attitudes towards the actions of men and women, religion, grief, frustrated passions and unrequited love, suicide, mother-daughter relationships, homosexuality and political upheavals. When reading this novel, I was struck with how familiar some of the issues were to those still experienced by women today. The scenes where Mary loses her premature daughter were particularly heart-breaking and her loss is felt through the novel. As a new mother these scenes, along with Mary’s longing for the mother she never knew, had a particular resonance for me. Knowing what happens to Mary’s other children after the events of the novel make Mary’s ruminations on grief and loss in the novel particularly poignant and help us understand some of her inspirations for writing Frankenstein.

The author has done an admirable job of keeping the dialogue in tune with that of the time whilst not alienating modern readers. The inclusion of letters back and fore to various characters is also a nice approach to break the narrative up and to get an insight into the mind of Mary and some of the other characters. The novel has been comprehensively researched and follows real life events close enough to satisfy the more nitpicky readers amongst us (like me!)

Although some of the characters are downright unlikeable, they are nonetheless utterly compelling. It can be difficult to like men like Shelley or Byron, yet we can understand some of what made them irresistible to the women and men who crossed their paths. This story is about young people who were born before their time and even if we don’t always like them, we must have a grudging admiration for their bravery in utterly rejecting the status quo and forging their own paths.

My only small criticism would be that at certain points it was tricky to follow the third-person viewpoint to know who was doing or saying what. I was caught out a few times and had to re-read some passages as I'd got lost. I’d suggest that this book doesn’t sit entirely comfortably in the Young Adult genre. I’d perhaps categorise it more leaning towards Historical Fiction. That’s not to say young people wouldn’t like it, they certainly could and would. It just didn’t “feel” like a typical YA novel to me and I think it would perhaps appeal more to a slightly mature reader.

This is an intense read being the imagined inner life of Mary Shelley (nee Wollenstonecraft/Godwin), Percy Bysshe Shelley and the people connected to them in the years between the first meeting of Mary and Bysshe and his death at the age of 29.
From historical documents we know the Shelleys did not have an easy life. They had to deal not only with social ostracisation and financial difficulties due to their life style choice of living in a group and espousing free love, but also infant death and suicide.
Writing in a way that takes us into the room as an intimate observer, Dogar takes us deep into the lives and minds of the women particularly; it does not make for easy reading as no-one is happy for long. Dogar imagines how the circumstances lead to the writing of Frankenstein and how writing could have helped Mary see her situation with fresh personal insights which in turn fed into the novel.
I have only given four stars because I think you need to know something of the context to get the most from reading this book, in particular, the significance of Mary Wollenstonecraft who is referred to frequently as an influence on Mary Shelley. I felt I was adding my own knowledge to this aspect; however, this would make a very interesting read alongside Frankenstein itself and I will recommend it as such.

Monsters is a young adult novel about the creation of Frankenstein, fictionalising the life of Mary Shelley around that time. In 1814, Mary Godwin meets Percy Bysshe Shelley at the behest of her father, writer William Godwin. Mary and Percy immediately are struck by one another, and bond over the writing of Mary's mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, who died after giving birth to Mary. The young lovers run away, escaping societal and Godwin's disapproval, but they have Jane, Mary's stepsister, along with them. The tangle between the three of them is complicated, as they balance radical ideals with the realities of life.

I came to this novel with low expectations: it is difficult to do justice to historical fiction centred around iconic writers' lives, especially the Romantics. Too many books try to simplify their personalities, but Monsters thankfully keeps them complex, giving perspectives from Mary and Jane (who later changes her name to Claire), as well as more fleeting glimpses into the thoughts of Mary's sister Fanny, Percy, and Lord Byron. The downside of this is that the perspective can shift within chapters and sections, sometimes in a disorientating fashion, so you will suddenly get the motivations of a character when you thought that part of narrative was from another's perspective.

By focusing on the time from when Mary and Percy met until her finishing writing Frankenstein, Dogar has a chunk of their lives to focus on, rather than stretching too far. This helps with the fictionalisation too: it is a neater story without their endless travels around Italy, and with keeping the tension between Mary, Percy, and Jane, rather than bringing in later people who complicated their relationships. Dogar tries hard to balance Mary and Jane, particularly in terms of sympathy, whilst also not painting Percy as a villain, as many people try to in order to 'fix' the narrative.

A lot of decisions have to be made when writing a novel about these people, particularly in terms of what happened between Percy and Jane, and how Byron interacted with them, and the rumours circulating all of them. This element in particular may make the novel more enjoyable to readers (presumably a lot of teenage readers) who don't know all the ins and outs of these people and the questions in their lives, as it would be less obvious where these choices have been made. The novel would make a decent introduction to them, as it does take liberties but at least makes them complex characters.

Other than the age of Mary and Jane (around sixteen to eighteen) and obvious focus on first love to begin with, the novel doesn't feel particularly young adult in terms of characters (being sixteen then isn't the same as being sixteen now) or narrative (as it follows what they actually did, more or less). It doesn't water down elements like Percy Shelley's free love ideals or the loss of children that occurred during this time. This means that it could be enjoyed by anyone interested in a retelling of the real life events that precipitated the writing of Frankenstein, regardless of what kind of books they typically read.

Ultimately, Monsters is a flawed yet enjoyable retelling of Mary Godwin's life as she eloped with Percy Shelley, found hardship, and was inspired by her reading and experience to write Frankenstein. If you are already very interested in these figures (as I am) then it is easy to spot authorial decisions that affect sympathy and events, but it is certainly better than expected for a fictionalised version of this point in literary history.