First, thank you to NetGalley and HarperVia for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I'd like to start off by saying that gothic literature is a genre that I typically have to read multiple times-- or very carefully-- to enjoy. So I wasn't entirely surprised when it took me a while to finish this book.

Mary & the Birth of Frankenstein is a translated Dutch novel about Mary Shelley, written with a gothic and sapphic twist that blended facts and fiction together. With a promising exposition, I thought that this book would be one of my favourites. Instead, I was left bored, not feeling deeply for any of the characters or their stories. I kept on wishing this book was less gothic and more realistic/historical fiction. I wanted to learn more about Mary Shelley as the author of one of the most well-known pieces of literature and how she got there.

Despite that, I can't argue that this book is well-written, or, I guess, well-translated. Translation is an art of its own, and I know that translated books can often feel off. But this never did. For the most part, the writing was cohesive and did properly tell a story that I wanted to hear.

2.5 stars, rounded up.

My thanks to both NetGalley and the publisher HarperVia for an advanced copy of this novel focusing on the creation of one of the first science fiction novels, and the story of the young woman who drew on the evils she saw around her, as well as the love she felt to create it.

There is an old saying in the music industry. One has their whole life to make that first album, they have six months to make the second. This adage can be applied to writing that first book. One can draw on a lifetime of experiences, or memories, of acts, of thoughts, and of course mistakes and use them to fuel the fire of one's creativity. Mary Shelley was still in her teens when she created her fable of Frankenstein, his monster, and life after death, but Shelley had lived a live of loss, and of love, with a lot in between. Shelley's story resounds through the ages, even though the story was written as a diversion from a dark and grey year, both physically and mentally. Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout, is a fictional telling of the life of Mary Shelley and the bits of her life that lead to the Promethean moment of literary creation.

The skies are full of ash from a far distant volcano, making Lake Geneva in 1816 a grey, dirty place in 1816, a time that has been called the "year without a summer" Mary, her love the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, along with Mary's grief of her lost child have come to Switzerland to stay with Lord Byron, to rest, to flee scandal and of course mourn. The sun is gone, the skies are cloudy and the company is waning, until as a diversion Byron proposes a contest. Byron asks his guests to create their own Ghost Story, as Byron had become addicted to German tales of eerie happenings. Mary not being a writer like the other two poets, though her parents were feels at a loss, until she thinks back a few years, before she met Shelley and her life changed. To a time she spent in Scotland, living with a family whose daughter Isabella Baxter, Mary began to feel quite warmly. And the creature who dwelled deep in the highlands, and when Mary learned that monsters might have the most human of faces.

A strong mix of gothic horror, gothic romance, and that scariest of writings, coming of age and first stirrings of love and what that can mean. Along with a real sense of wonder and skillful writing. Eekhout has a real ability to make her writing seem distant in the gothic sense, and as confessional and raw as a teen romance, which takes real skill. One way of the other the book could collapse, but Eekhout is very good about telling the story Eekhout wants, and it really is a great story. The characters are strong and seem real, Mary but also Isabella. There is a mood too, a darkness, and atmosphere that bad things could happen, and yet there is love, between Mary and other characters which really makes readers want to know more.

I'm not a fan of using real characters in stories anymore, I think it's played and I wish for something new. However when the writing is both as interesting and well done as it is here, well I can be swayed. A book for fans of gothic stories, and of Frankenstein. Also for readers who enjoy stories about women finding themselves and realizing there is a whole world to be experienced, and not to live live as other want it lived.

I was excited to read this book as it promised sapphic and atmospheric horror. I enjoyed reading Frankenstein so it was nice to get an imagining of what shaped Mary Shelley and inspired her to write her novel.

The book (translated from Dutch) jumps between Mary's 1812 trip to Scotland and the Baxter family, and her 1816 trip where Frankenstein was written. I found the 1812 parts of the book more compelling, and the book was a bit slow and hard to get into at the beginning, but picked up by the middle.

I appreciated the portrayal of the horrors of girlhood and found Mary's relationship with Isabella a very relatable experience with a first wlw love.

Thank you to Net Galley, Anne Eekhout and HarperVia for providing me with my ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are entirely my own.

sapphic & spooky and so beautifully written i literally could not put this down. one of the best historical fictions i’ve possibly ever read & a stunning depiction of the innate darknesses of girlhood.

This story reimagines the young life of Mary Shelley at the time leading to the creation of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein.

It alternates between two timelines set apart by four years.

1816: Mary, with others, visits Lord Byron at Lake Geneva. It’s a circle of writers and poets that spend the evenings exchanging ghost stories. One night, Byron suggests that each writes a ghost story. While Mary muses over her tale, it reminds her of another summer, when she was fourteen.

1814: Mary is sent by her family from London to Dundee, Scotland, where she stays at Baxter family. She quickly becomes friends with Isabella Baxter, the younger of two daughters. They spend hours together wandering through the nature and conjuring stories about mythical creatures.

Baxter family has tradition of story night every second Friday of the month. There is a regular visitor to those evenings. It’s Mr. Booth, who is Isabella’s brother-in-law. From the first encounter, Mary notices something strange about him. At first impression, he looks handsome, but as she looks longer at him, it’s like his face takes another form. One evening, Mr. Booth tells a story of demonstration he saw years earlier when a corpse was more or less brought to life by electrical stimuli.

I enjoyed the character of Mary more in the timeline when she is fourteen, still innocent and discovering the world around her. However, there are quite a few scenes insinuating a sapphic involvement between two young girls, which I don’t know if it’s based on some facts or is fiction. I didn’t find those moments as engrossing part of the story.

In the later timeline, Mary already feels old and sounds older than her age and is grieved by the loss of her child. I found this timeline more dramatic and didn’t connect as strongly as with the earlier timeline.

The first half of the story has a faster pace as there are interesting facts being revealed. In the second half, there seems to be some repetition. Thus, there is not much moving the story forward.

Overall, it is an interesting story and written by a talented writer.

Source: ARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout is a fictional account of Mary Shelley's life leading up to the creation of Frankenstein. It has two timelines- Mary's stay with the Baxters in 1812 and her stay with Lord Byron in 1816. I would recommend some familiarity with Frankenstein to understand some of the references. As with all historical fiction some liberties were taken. The timeline and characters were all correct. Beyond that this book is mostly just vibes. The narration is unreliable. I am not sure how I feel about it. At times I thought it added to the artistry and at times I was just confused. There more emphasis on emotion than story. Not wanting to become a book report here I will say there are some interesting literary elements worth exploring if you were to use this title in a class or book club.

The Dutch version is available now. The English translation is out October 3.

Thank you to HarperVia and NetGalley for this eARC.

Thank you to Net Galley and the publisher for this arc. This was an interesting story about Mary Shelley's early years. I love Frankenstein and this was an interesting take on Mary Shelley's life.

Thank you Netgalley for this opportunity to read this book.

I have yet to read Frankenstein, but this behind the scenes look into Mary Shelleys life, albeit a fictional one, makes me want to find a copy and finally read it!

What drew me to this book was the sapphic retelling and Mary Shelly. I am obsessed with Frankenstein and Mary Shelly’s works so being able to read a modern retelling of her life seemed like paradise in physical manifestation. However, I am not sure if it was the translation or the work itself, it fell flat for me. The writing was cohesive in some places and juvenile in others. I loved Mary and Isabelle’s relationship idea but it was not executed in a way that would draw readers in. The tension of the mystery in some scenes was built up to a breaking point and in others, just left outside the door like it didn’t matter. Juicy metaphors and beautiful prose were only in the first third of the book and last two chapters, the rest of the book felt forced out of the author to fill space, Overall, the book was not consistent and the translation itself read as very incoherent and uncomfortable.

Anne Eekhout does a great job in creating a re-imagining of Mary Shelley, it had a great concept and I enjoyed the use of the creation of Frankenstein in this story. It had a great writing style to it and the characters felt like they belonged in the world. It left me wanting more from the author and was translated well.

MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN
BY: ANNE EEKHOUT

This was a translation from Dutch blending facts with fiction about Mary Shelley's early years. I had read a historical novel about her famous mother Mary Wollstonecraft's birth of Mary Shelly, and the days following up to her death from complications. Mary Wollstonecraft was a trailblazer, and prodigious writer in her own right. I requested this because I was hoping that I would be informed of Mary Shelley's writing process for her Gothic Science fiction novel "Frankenstein."

This is my second time reviewing "Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein," I had written a comprehensive well thought out review, and when I went to submit or send it, I lost my whole review, except for the first sentence. The writing process Mary Shelley used explored in this historical novel based in fact, but blended in fiction gives more implicit insights than explicit examples of what inspired Mary Shelley to write "Frankenstein."

In 1812, Mary's father and step-mother Mary Jane sent Mary from their London home to Dundee, Scotland to stay with the Baxter family. The Baxter children lost their mother, and Mr. Baxter lost his wife in the previous year. Isabella who Mary forms an intense relationship with mostly stays in her bedroom at first. It's a Baxter tradition to have a family story night, by which each member makes up a story and tells it to the gathered family members. They invite Mr. Booth because he enjoys it.

Mr. Booth is married to Margaret, who is the Baxter family's older sister. She is now crippled, and in a wheelchair from falling down a flight of stairs in the Booth residence. The Booth's don't have any children of their own. Mr. Booth and Margaret live in a house at least four times bigger than the Baxter family. He is known to be charming, and owns his own brewery. He tells of Scottish folklore about sea monsters that is quite entertaining.

While Isabella and Mary are out roaming the Scottish countryside, Mary thinks that she sees a monster behind a rock. She shows Isabella, but some time in the future Isabella denies seeing it or doesn't remember Mary pointing it out to her.

The novel alternates between 1812, with Mary staying with the Baxter family, and four years later with Mary in 1816. The 1816, sections are with Mary, her lover Percy Shelley, a poet, Lord Byron, also a poet, his physician John, and Mary's Step-mother's daughter Claire in Switzerland. One night with all of them sitting around the fire, Lord Byron challenges the group to see who can write the best ghost story. Claire is not included and Mary often vacillates between disliking Claire, and feeling sorry for her.

Throughout reading this I was continually sifting through scenes trying to figure out what took place in Mary's young life that most influenced her to imagine the material for her most famous novel "Frankenstein." Could she have been genetically gifted from her mother to write such a classic? Could it have been drawn from her memories of staying with the Baxter family, and her affair with Isabella? Could she have felt mixed feelings from being sent away from her father when she was only fourteen years old going on fifteen?

This historical novel is atmospheric having a lot of descriptive writing about the thunder, lightning, and rain. The writing at first wasn't something that I liked, but I quickly grew to appreciate it. I read "Frankenstein," in High school, so I was looking for parallels in Mary's life experience. I ended up really enjoying this, and thought it was not only well written, but also well translated.

Publication Date: October 3, 2023

Thank you to Net Galley, Anne Eekhout and HarperVia for providing me with my ARC, in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are entirely my own.

#MaryandtheBirthofFrankenstein #AnneEekout #HarperVia #NetGalley

This one was a classic case of "I came for the sapphic, I stayed for the creepiness". Deftly translated out of Dutch, "Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein" goes back and forth in time to reveal the seeds of inspiration for Mary Shelley's great gothic work. As a historical fiction novel, "Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein" does a great job in depicting the fickle gloom of nature - very important when discussing people such as Mary and her friends, who were devoted naturalists - and indeed, this is one of those novels where atmosphere and character work trumps plot. The prose is elegant, veers slightly purple, and can sometimes require a second reading or two to really grasp. When it lands, it's lovely. This one reads more like a prose poem than a novel at times, which is alternately eerily charming and slightly obtuse.

I did enjoy it. Novels that move forward and backward in time sometimes leave me a little jostled, but I felt like it was handled here. I did wish more "happened", but I think if you go into this one expecting more mood than plot, you'll have a good time.

Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein by Anne Eekhout is an interesting historical fiction that takes a look at the infamous novelist and some of the inspiration that she drew upon in her youth that helped shape who she was as a writer and as a person.

This book is an English translation from a Dutch author and I thought this edition was impressive in regards to the work and talent in translating from one language to another.

I enjoyed the aspects of the book that really gave insight into the nuances of Ms. Shelly and some of the events that helped create the woman that she was to become.

I may have liked for a bit less to be associated with personal relations and more so on events, relationships, and her talents that led to the infamous person we now know, but it was still enlightening and unique nevertheless, and I still learned a great deal.

4/5 stars

Thank you NG and HarperVia for this wonderful arc and in return I am submitting my unbiased and voluntary review and opinion.

I am posting this review to my GR and Bookbub accounts immediately and will post it to my Amazon, Instagram, and B&N accounts upon publication on 10/3/23.