This is an intense, beautifully written historical novel that shines a long-overdue spotlight on Claire Clairmont, one of the most overlooked figures of the Romantic period. Claire has been largely relegated to the footnotes of literary history, but McDowell brings her vividly to life here, giving her agency and depth.

Clairmont explores Claire's relationships with Lord Byron and Mary and Percy Shelley, and the lasting consequences of being around them. I really liked how the book dismantled the common romanticised perception of Byron; he's callous, selfish, and destructive here, and I think reminding readers of the less romantic sides of him is just as important as giving Claire a spotlight.

Strongly recommended to anyone who enjoys literary historical fiction or who has even a passing interest in Byron or the Shelleys.

This fell very flat for me. I could not keep up with what was going on. I could not understand what the drama was. All of the characters were pretty cold. Not an ounce of enjoyment. Trying to leave some mystery left it far too complicated to keep up with what was going on.
The author has a new book coming this year, so I’m going to try and read that and see how it lands.

Next up from the ‘been on the TBR for far too long’ list: ‘Clairmont’ by @lesleywrites , a fascinating fictional reimagining of the life of Claire Clairmont, giving centre stage to a woman usually only mentioned as a hanger-on in stories about her famous half sister, Mary Shelley, and the years they spent with the mad, bad poets Byron and PB Shelley.

The novel follows Claire from the heady days of her doomed teenaged affair with Byron during a tempestuous Swiss ‘summer’ that famously wasn’t a summer at all, and on through her life afterwards in Russia and Paris as she strives to live as a new kind of woman, not subordinated to traditional expectations when it comes to making a life, or a living (or love) on her own terms.

The characters really pop. Claire is wonderfully passionate, impatient, idealistic, and resilient in the face of some truly tragic blows. Certain other characters perfectly put the narcissist sh*t into ‘poet’.

It’s far from a cosy Christmas read, but Claire’s refusal to give in made me want to stay with her. She came across as a woman who would be a fantastic drinking pal, much more so than the version of her half sister with whom she shares these pages. I’ll miss her.

As a bonus, if you’re a Romantic era nut who likes playing ‘spot the reference’, there are also plenty of neat allusions to the writings of the BS (Byron-Shelley) set. Having just finished an essay on Frankenstein, this was part was particularly pleasing.

A well written, well researched novel although sometimes it's hard to tell fact from fiction

Thank you to netgalley and the publishers for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in return for a fair and honest review

This is an interesting retelling of the story of Lord Byron and the Shelleys, from the perspective of Claire Clairmont. Claire Clairmont was Mary Shelley's step sister. The story is told across three time periods. This was a very well written book. I did find it a little slow in places but overall an original and atmospheric story.

The story of Mary Shelley’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont and her affair with Lord Byron and her life afterwards is told in this historical fiction novel. It should’ve been hard to look away from but I found it too long, drawn out and disjointed. It’s told in three interwoven timelines and while this isn’t a problem it did make it a hard read as the characters are mostly unlikeable. A bit of a disappointment with such interesting starting material.

Clairmont blends historical fact with fiction to create a compelling narrative. While heavy in substance, the book's concise prose navigates the realities of Claire's struggles skilfully, immersing readers in the vivid backdrop of the period. It offers a poignant reminder of the resilience of the human spirit amidst the historical turbulence women like Claire faced. Overall, Clairmont is a commendable depiction and an enjoyable reading experience.

Stepsister to the renowned Mary Shelley and muse or 'handmaiden' to Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, Claire Clairmont is the overlooked companion to these famous romantic writers. This novel explores her life, partly fictionalised, but grounded in the research the author and others have done on her life. The novel is split between three time periods of Claires life, including the stormy summer in Switzerland when Shelley first penned Frankenstein. This is beautifully written and an interesting examination of the relationship between the Shelley’s, Byron, and Clairmont from a perspective rarely considered. Claire is painted as a passionate, tragic, strong, and flawed heroine who was in many ways ahead of her time and I enjoyed reading her story.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for an ARC to this book.

I've always been intrigued by the story of how 'Frankenstein' came into existence - the stormy summer of 1816 on the shores of Lake Geneva where Mary Shelley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron and John Polidori gathered to share their storytelling and pass the time. The rest, as they say, is history...

Except that Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley's step-sister, was also there that summer and is often forgotten in the light of the bigger, badder and much more infamous characters around her. I only really knew about her from reading Jeanette Winterson's 'Frankissstein', a reimagining of that crazy summer and a whole lot more (sexbots!) I'm always here for stories about women whose voices have been lost to history, so I approached this book with enthusiasm.

The story shifts between timelines as we see a young Claire in 1816 (obsessed with Byron and carrying his child), then as a governess in Russia, then as an independent woman embarking on an ill-advised affair in Paris, before a poignant farewell as she leaves the UK for good. All of this covers about 40 years in Claire's life and it is clearly well-researched - there are lots of factual details that pop up within the narrative and its authenticity is discussed by the writer (along with a reading list) in notes at the end of the novel. I'll admit that I found the shifting between timelines a little tricky to follow until I got used to the characters within each timeline.

I really wanted Claire Clairmont to be an intelligent, independent woman forging her own way despite the many setbacks in her life - and I now think this was an unrealistic expectation given the time period. The Georgian era wasn't known for its liberal approach to unwed mothers, so Claire was on the back foot from the start. Add in her seemingly insatiable desires for Byron and many others, the lack of contraceptive options, plus the horrific infant mortality rates of the period, and we're left with a woman who lived freely but paid the price. I found myself feeling that Claire Clairmont was a tragic figure, but one that also really didn't make good choices along the way.

Still, I did like the historical details and the insights into the Shelleys and Byron - even if they were all pretty terrible people in this telling. In the notes at the back of the novel, there is a snippet of a memoir that Claire Clairmont wrote in which she describes Shelley and Byron as 'monsters of lying, meanness, cruelty and treachery' and I'd agree wholeheartedly with this - although McDowell uses the word 'astonishingly' to describe this which I guess means we don't see them quite the same! Byron, in particular, was awful and I'm not sure the unravelling of the whole story showed him in any better light. Similarly, I didn't warm to either of the Shelleys, even though I wanted to love Mary for her literary genius against the odds.

This is an engaging and well-researched historical novel, although one that didn't quite do what I wanted it to do. I think this is my fault for having unrealistic expectations about a figure on whom there is a reasonable amount of historical information - I'm not sure McDowell could have changed her character without deviating from her truth. Instead, we are shown the often sad life of a woman who was badly treated by some of the men around her, yet still managed to outlive them all and forge some independence within tight Georgian/Victorian parameters.

Following the life of Claire Claremont during and following her affair with Lord Byron, this novel is told over three time periods and shows how her life is dramatically affected by the events in Geneva during the summer of 1816. A complex character , Claire is difficult to like and it must be said that all the characters in the novel are distasteful and ultimately selfish in some way. A slow burn to start and it took me awhile to get to grips with the three timelines, which were initially a little confusing, but they eventually came together and the story improved considerably. A book but I imagine will be enjoyed by those readers who enjoy historical fiction. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC of this novel in return for an honest review.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher Headline/Wildfire for the digital ARC, it has not affected my honest review.

TW: child death, unhealthy relationships, explicit sexual content

“Clairmont” tells the story of a massively forgotten, but just as important historical figure, Claire Clairmont. The step-sister of Mary Shelley, beloved sister-in-law and muse of Percy Bysshe Shelley and the mother of Lord Byron’s daughter Allegra, she has long been shoved to the side in favour of those who made literary history. The book starts in 1816, not long after Claire Clairmont introduces the Shelleys to Lord Byron after an affair when she was only 18. It then moves through the “Year Without A Summer” in Geneva during which Mary Shelley wrote the earliest version of Frankenstein and John Polidori’s “The Vampyre”, a precursor to “Dracula”- but Claire has discovered she is pregnant from her affair with Byron. It flashes forward to Claire’s experiences in 1825 as a governess in Russia after the deaths of both her daughter Allegra, aged 5 (in part because of Byron’s neglect) and Percy Shelley’s drowning before moving on to 1843, when Claire finally settled in France. In between this are her feelings after the death of Byron, her experiences as a notorious woman and the complicated square between Claire, Byron, Mary and Percy that has been the subject of a lot of speculation and study. The relationship between Claire and Mary is complex and full of irritation, love and despair as the two sisters navigate a society that will always work better for men while also experiencing the need to express themselves through creation. Claire’s vibrant, passionate but ultimately destructive affair with Byron- while short- defines so much of her life. This is shown through the non-linear narrative as she still expresses her anger at him well into her eighties in Florence, even as she is the only surviving member of their legendary group.

This is a powerful piece of historical fiction, giving a voice to someone many either don’t know existed or haven’t wanted to hear from. The author has made Claire into a character of a thousand contradictions- caring but impulsive and intense- while retaining so much of the important history that she lived through and influenced. There’s no attempt to romanticise the kind of relationship that Claire had with Byron and the Shelleys or how difficult and turbulent her experiences as a mother were once she gave up access to her daughter to Byron. Her story is not well known but it should be, and this novel shows the powerful reality that life with creatives, in the middle of an extended Grand Tour, could be turbulent and unsettled. It’s also a deeply uncomfortable book, with Claire alternating between worshipping the days gone by and detesting everyone she associated with and the impact they had on each others’ lives and legacies. I'm going to be thinking about Claire Clairmont for a long time, especially when I read the works of the people she knew

I'm on the edge about this novel. I always found the Shelley/Byron/Wollstonecraft menage intriguing. Clairmont is always a bit on the edge, a sort of villain and red woman.
I think that this novel did a good job in talking about these characters in a realistic way but it did not suceeded in making me change idea about Claire Clairomont.
A good historical novel, recommended
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I found this a difficult book to read. It was very slow to start and a little chaotic due to the split timelines. The narrative didn't flow for me, so it was a DNF. (To be fair to the author, I won't share this negative review to socials/Amazon, as I appreciate the enormous amount of work that went into writing this).

Historical fiction based on seeds of reality is my favourite kind, especially when the lead character is as tantalising as this one. Clare Clairmont was a real person - the stepsister of Mary Shelley and this is the fictional account of her POV. Clairmont has a darker tone than I was expecting and explores the life and relationships of Clare over three time periods in different geographical landscapes.

I thought Clairmont was so well written and researched, I was immersed in Claire's story, a great historical read.

With thanks to the publishers and NetGalley for an advance review copy.

I won’t pretend I knew a great deal about Claire Clairmont’s life when I started this book, but I was aware of her existence as Mary Shelley’s half sister and the mother of a child by Byron. However I don't think it would matter much if you knew nothing about her, as I think this works very well as a work of fiction in its own right.

The narrative is split across three time periods, placing Claire squarely at the centre of each key period in her long life. The first takes place in Geneva, summer of 1816, when Claire is 18. Having thrown herself at Lord Byron, she is now pregnant and has persuaded Mary and Percy Shelley that they should all travel to Lake Geneva to be near Byron. Claire is struggling to accept that far from her pregnancy winning Byron’s heart it has made him despise her. The second strand of the narrative takes us to Russia in 1825, when a childless 27-year-old Claire is employed as a governess with a wealthy Russian family, fending off the gentle and devoted attention of the family tutor and becoming ever more attached to the little girl who fills the void left, as we learn, by her own daughter’s death. The third time period covers Claire’s time in Paris in 1845 - Shelley is long since dead, Byron too, and Claire feels cheated of the chance to exact revenge on the man who cruelly separated her from her daughter whom he left to die in a convent, alone.

Throughout the novel, Claire remains true to her desire to be an independent woman, as inspired by her stepmother Mary Wollstonecraft. She lives alone, works and takes lovers. But her entire life is coloured by the loss of her daughter at such a young age, and her cruel treatment at Byron's hands.

I enjoyed this book, but my overall impression, having finished it, is not as good as it was around a third through. I didn't have a problem with the split timeline, but I just thought it went on a bit too long. Claire learns to temper her impetuosity a bit, but I didn't really get a sense of her gaining a huge amount of maturity or developing a great deal as a character. The misogyny inherent in Victorian society, even within quite radical and freethinking circles Claire moves in, is well conveyed, but I was left feeling that the whole was somehow less than the sum of its parts.

I have read several novels about the Romantic poets and their social circle, but Claire Clairmont has always seemed a shadowy character, who hasn’t come to life as strongly as other women such as Mary Shelley or Lady Caroline Lamb. This new novel by Lesley McDowell changes that by giving Claire a voice and placing her at the forefront of her own story.

Clairmont follows Claire throughout three different periods of her life, beginning in 1816 when she accompanies her stepsister Mary Godwin (later Mary Shelley) to Geneva. Claire, Mary and Mary’s married lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, with whom she already has a baby son, are renting a house by the lake, while Shelley’s friend Lord Byron is staying at the nearby Villa Diodati with his doctor, John Polidori. Claire is pregnant with Byron’s child, but it’s becoming clear that he now views her as an inconvenience and would prefer it if the child was never born.

The Geneva episode taking place in 1816, the ‘year without a summer’ which followed a volcanic eruption in Indonesia, is the part of Claire’s life most people will be familiar with (if they’re familiar with her at all). It was during their stay at the Villa Diodati that Mary began to write her famous novel Frankenstein, and it’s through her own relationships with Byron and the Shelleys that Claire has gained historical significance. In addition, this novel also follows Claire during her time working as a governess in Russia in 1825 and later when she settles in Paris in the 1840s, and we gradually begin to see how those events of 1816 have impacted the rest of her life.

There were things that I liked about this book and things that I didn’t (more of the latter than the former, unfortunately). To start with a positive, I appreciated having the opportunity to learn more about Claire Clairmont, having previously known very little about her beyond her involvement with the Romantic poets. I had no idea what she did or where she went later in life, so I found that interesting. The story is not told in chronological order, but moves back and forth in time, with a Russia chapter followed by a Paris one then back to Geneva again, which I thought was quite confusing, particularly as the gaps between the timelines aren’t adequately filled in and no backstory is given for the characters prior to 1816. It felt as though half of the story was missing and it made it difficult to become fully immersed.

The writing is beautiful and dreamlike and at times reminded me of Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (especially since, like the O’Farrell novel where Shakespeare is never referred to by name, here Byron is always referred to by his nickname, Albe, and never Byron). However, sometimes beautiful writing isn’t enough and I didn’t get on very well with Hamnet so maybe it’s not surprising that I didn’t get on with this book either. The constant jumping around in time and the vagueness of the plot made it hard for me to really get to know Claire and understand her actions. Although I had a lot of sympathy for her because of the terrible way Byron treated her during and after her pregnancy (which has been well documented, including in his own letters), I had no idea what attracted her to him in the first place or how their relationship had reached this point, because none of that is explained or touched upon. Throughout the book, we are continually being dropped into situations that don’t make much sense without being given the full context.

Don’t let me put you off this book if you want to try it – there are plenty of other books I didn’t care for that other people have loved! This will probably be a good read for the right reader; it just wasn’t for me.

Thank you NetGalley and Headline for this eCopy to review

I was really looking forward to reading Clairmont and finding out more about Claire, Mary, Shelley, and Lord Byron. However, I found McDowell's novel very complicated and difficult to read. The violence Claire faced from Byron was particularly vile and I did not warm to Claire as the main character either.

The novel was over long and seemed to go round in circles in this instance going backwards and forwards in time was not successful, it just added to the chaos

Loosely based on real-life events, Clairmont tells the story of Claire Clairmont, Mary Shelley’s half-sister. Introduced into the world of the great romantic writers at a young age, Claire strikes up complicated relationships with Mary’s husband Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron whilst living in her sister’s shadow. Told through three prominent times during her life, the narrative tells of Claire’s struggle, and the tragic consequence of living amongst literary greatness.

I found the people and events featured in this book really interesting. I had never heard of Claire Clairmont and really sympathised with her story. Lesley McDowell acknowledges where she uses artistic license to give scope to more dramatic moments. I found myself more invested towards the end as it picked up pace. I found the earlier half of the book a bit confusing and drawn out so did not enjoy it as much as I potentially could have. Overall, a well researched and fascinating book but you need to stick with it.

Claire Clairmont, historically has always been seen as scandalous in her affair with Byron.
In this novel we delve into the true character of Claire - a brave, complex heroine, defying stereotypes and breaking rules.
Initially set in the summer of 1816 when Claire persuades the Shelley’s to travel to Lake Geneva to stay with Lord Byron, Mary Shelley is the step sister to the 18 year old Claire
She needs to see Byron as she is pregnant with his child and is totally obsessed with him, but the feeling isn’t mutual
It’s told over three timelines and moves from 1816 to the 1820s when see her life as a governess in Russia and finally her later life living the high life in Paris.
A very emotional read with lots of cruel moments, particularly by Byron - it so annoyed me that Byron was seemingly forgiven his bad behaviour and Claire was forced to make impossible choices.
The book assumes you’ve already have a lot of knowledge regarding Byron and Shelley, which I didn’t so found it a bit confusing at times.
“History has all but forgotten her story - but she will not be silenced” - so glad that with this book Claire hasn’t been written out of history.
Thanks @lesleywrites @headlinebooks & @netgalley for the insightful read

This was an amazing novel! Lesley McDowell brings the story of Claire Clairmont, a woman history tends to forget, to the contemporary with this beautiful, well-research and compelling novel that reminds me of Hilary Mattel. The stepsister of Mary Shelley, Claire Clairmont was overshadowed for much of her life, but McDowell does not let that happen in Clairmont; Claire is vibrant, she is sassy, and she is a deep thinker. Through the ups and downs in her life, I saw a survivor, a fighter who refuses to back down from living her life. I fell in love with her strength and her weaknesses because it made her feel so much more than a reimagination in a novel, McDowell brought her back to life and let her voice be heard.

If you adore Historical fiction and want to hear from a woman who battles the silent wars and continues to fight for herself, then Lesley McDowell's Clairmont is your next read.

Thank you, NetGalley and Headline for sending me an ARC in exchange for my honest review.