Mary

Or the Birth of Frankenstein

By: Anne Eekhout, Laura Watkinson - translator

Narrated by: Anna Burnett

There is a beast inside her, a monster. It wants to scream, it wants to tear things apart.

1816. Mary, 18 years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities, haunted by the loss of her baby daughter.

Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary.

Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits. And she encountered real monsters – both in the rocky wilds and far, far closer to home...

Content warning: Contains some violence and/or strong language.

©2021 Original text © Anne Eekhout 2021 English translation © Laura Watkinson 2023. ‘Fairy Story’ (original: Sprookje’) by M. Vasalis from De vogel Phoenix © Van Oorschot 1949 (P)2023 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

'A fantastically moody, unsettling novel, with a teasing, enigmatic atmosphere entirely its own.' (Sarah Waters, New York Times bestselling author of The Paying Guests and Fingersmith)

'A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel, which brings Mary Shelley back to life with a brilliant intensity.' (J.M. Miro, author of Ordinary Monsters)

'I was bewitched by this profound and pleasurable imagining of Mary Shelley and the birth of Frankenstein.' (Joanne Burn, author of The Hemlock Cure)