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A review by aimeesbookishlife
In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson
3.0
The information about Mary Shelley was great, but I really struggled with the writing style.
The present tense narration felt strange for a non-fiction book, and the author romanticises her subject rather than presenting an unbiased view. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, it's just that I was expecting a more impartial biography and this reads more like very well researched historical fiction, albeit without much of a story line. It does allow Sampson to explore Mary's thoughts and feelings, which made the book a little less dry, but she jumps to conclusions based on the most spurious bits of evidence.
For example, there's a chapter about Mary's early years that talks about what nursery songs she would have known based on the rhymes that were popular at the time. We have no way of knowing if Mary even knew of these rhymes (just because they were popular doesn't mean everyone had heard them) yet the author seems to think they were fundamental to building Mary's later character.
Sampson also paints herself as an omnipotent narrator, able to tell us exactly what the infant Mary was scared of:
Sometimes, like every child her age, she must be afraid of things she doesn't understand. (...) On winter nights, even in the nursery, the leaping shadows cast by the fire seem more substantial than the candlelight. Things get lost in their obscurity. Every night her papa disappears in the darkness of downstairs. Even her sister, whose breathing she can hear in the other cot, seems vast distances away.
Now I agree that most children are scared of the dark, but it's a bit of a leap to say that Mary 'must be afraid' and to imagine how far away she felt from her father and sister. I'm not sure it adds anything to our understanding of Mary Shelley - after all, plenty of children have nightmares and don't go on to write widely-acclaimed horror stories.
If you want a romanticised idea of Mary Shelley interspersed with details about her life then this book will suit you, but for pedants like me you'll get more hard facts from her Wikipedia page.
The present tense narration felt strange for a non-fiction book, and the author romanticises her subject rather than presenting an unbiased view. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, it's just that I was expecting a more impartial biography and this reads more like very well researched historical fiction, albeit without much of a story line. It does allow Sampson to explore Mary's thoughts and feelings, which made the book a little less dry, but she jumps to conclusions based on the most spurious bits of evidence.
For example, there's a chapter about Mary's early years that talks about what nursery songs she would have known based on the rhymes that were popular at the time. We have no way of knowing if Mary even knew of these rhymes (just because they were popular doesn't mean everyone had heard them) yet the author seems to think they were fundamental to building Mary's later character.
Sampson also paints herself as an omnipotent narrator, able to tell us exactly what the infant Mary was scared of:
Sometimes, like every child her age, she must be afraid of things she doesn't understand. (...) On winter nights, even in the nursery, the leaping shadows cast by the fire seem more substantial than the candlelight. Things get lost in their obscurity. Every night her papa disappears in the darkness of downstairs. Even her sister, whose breathing she can hear in the other cot, seems vast distances away.
Now I agree that most children are scared of the dark, but it's a bit of a leap to say that Mary 'must be afraid' and to imagine how far away she felt from her father and sister. I'm not sure it adds anything to our understanding of Mary Shelley - after all, plenty of children have nightmares and don't go on to write widely-acclaimed horror stories.
If you want a romanticised idea of Mary Shelley interspersed with details about her life then this book will suit you, but for pedants like me you'll get more hard facts from her Wikipedia page.