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joecam79 's review for:
Transformation
by Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley is best known for "Frankenstein" and, to a lesser extent, her end-of-days novel "The Last Man". However, apart from a number of other novels, she also wrote several short stories, often with a supernatural or fantastic theme. Three of these are included in this attractive paperback edition published by Hesperus Classics. The title piece - "Transformation" - describes the narrator's Faustian pact with a devilish dwarf, and is rich in Gothic tropes. "The Mortal Immortal" features a hapless protagonist who drinks an elixir of life and eventually discovers that immortality is more of a bane than a blessing. "The Evil Eye" is a tale of warring tribes and family feuds set in the Balkans. Despite its title, its subject is not overtly supernatural but, in its exoticism and unexpected plot twists it recalls respectively the "Oriental Gothic" and the then budding genre of "sensation literature". All three stories are finely crafted and reveal an active imagination at work. "Frankenstein" was certainly no one-off.