haxxunne 's review for:

Love, Sex and Frankenstein by Caroline Lea

3.0

dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: No

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A strange macabre circle

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Escaping Shelley’s London debtors, Mary is whisked to Geneva by Shelley along with her stepsister Claire Clairmont to join Byron, who at that point is yet to arrive. When he too joins the party with Dr Polidori, hidden—and not so hidden—attractions surface between them all and the very nature of each is revealed in public and in private. And then we come to the most famous event in Geneva: the stories. Will Mary be able to write the story that is bubbling up within her, or will the too strong emotions swirling around the whole party get the better of her?

Write what you know: if there’s one lesson in the world of publishing, it’s this; and Mary Shelley was surrounded by monsters, so that is what she chose to write about, what she had to write about. Lea’s disturbing book explores power, from Mary’s seeming lack of power to Shelley’s coercive hold over her, Byron’s negging versus Mary’s stepsister Claire who manipulates everyone around her, the desperate hotel owner who sells front row seats to the scandalous aesthetes, the locals at the mercy of season and weather: power and its lack drives every character in this modern yet historical novel of a woman reclaiming her own choices. Although based on fact, Mary’s fate in this book is a little too pat for me, which is why it’s only three stars, but worth reading for a fleshing out of this strange, macabre circle.