It’s 1853 London. Ex-medical student Victor Frankenstein has been missing for years now. Frankenstein’s great niece Mary Saville and her husband, Henry, are trying to follow in his scientific footsteps and become renowned paleontologists. They have the brains and the ambition; the only thing they lack is the reputation. Mary is a woman with a sharp mind but a fierce tongue and Henry is an unemployed gambling addict: none of this earning appeal with their peers.
But after finding clues to her great uncle’s disappearance, Mary’s luck may just change. She constructs a plan that will force the scientific community to take her and her husband seriously; no one will be able to ignore them after they learn to create life. Once they have successfully constructed their Creature, Henry’s ambition soars, but Mary finds herself asking deeper, more important questions than she’s ever confronted before. As Henry’s desire for fame grows, Mary must decide how far she is willing to go to protect the Creature she has grown to love.
REVIEW
This book was simply brilliant.
Meet Mary, born out of wedlock, and deposited in her grandmother’s care following her parents’ death. She had a rather lonely childhood, and is now Mrs. Sutherland, wife of one of the most infuriating men in 1850s London. She has a great interest in palaeontology, and is shown to be rather talented, but the fact that she is a woman in that time simply means that she has to live in the shadow of her husband Henry. As he struggles to make a name for himself and gain his footing in some academic circles, she finds evidence of a creation in her long-lost great-uncle’s research, and convinces Henry to undertake the creation of something inspired by it.
“But I have always been a beastly little thing at heart, it seems.”
The narration in this book flits between the past and the present, and gives readers a great view into defining moments of Mary’s life. She is given company, only to have it taken away rather abruptly. She is given small mercies in the form of kindness from neighbours, Mr. and Mrs. Jamsetjee, who encourage her interest in palaeontology. Though setting the reader up to sympathise with the protagonist, the author does a great job of showing us her shortcomings. Mary is smart, and feisty, but she is desperate to escape the shackles of her low-birth and makes rather unwise choices, and lands up with a husband whose talents lie in mediocrity, spite, and making even more foolish choices.
The story is structured to wonderfully include all the themes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and nowhere do they feel forced into the narrative. As the story progresses, the events that occur raise intelligent questions about the different between intention and invention, about the nature of science, and raise ethical considerations. It raises many points for discussions that center around bias and prejudice. One of the ways it diverges from the classic is in Mary’s reaction to her creation: where Victor Frankenstein showed abandonment, the protagonist here grows to love the dependent creation that she pieced together to life. While the effort to make it arose of a need to prove a point and establish oneself, she recognises the need to take responsibility and act for the best.
“I should like that, I think; to make an utter fool of myself, and be regarded not as a bad example of womanhood, but merely a bad example.”
Classics give us a great window into the past. Retellings and reimagining give us an opportunity to create space to use that window to include themes relevant today, and Charlie uses this to the fullest. She explores Mary’s queer desires and her want for companionship. She showcases how difficulty it was for women to be taken seriously in academia, and the extra privileges they had to have been lucky to have to make that happen. From today’s perspective, Mary’s situation is almost pitiful, because she relies on her husband making wise choices, and on him being reasonable enough to credit her for more than her illustrations for his scientific papers and journals. While she is the mastermind behind their operation, she is wholly at his mercy, and one wrong step from him puts her only chance to establish herself into total jeopardy. Anyway, she isn’t guaranteed anything. And of course, many different parts of the book only bring to light the higher behavioural standards that were expected of women, as they were expected to play the limited roles they assigned.
While Mary is feisty and recognises the extent of male privilege in those times, she is also kind and sympathetic. While her husband’s shortcomings become more apparent and make her want to increase the distance between them, she still manages to take into consideration how his childhood might have affected his view of his family. A big part of the book showcases the sexism prevalent in those times, and her frustration at the stark contrast in the barriers that she has to cross, compared to what her husband would, but also brings to consideration the uneven footing created by other factors like finances and race. Overall, this book provides a great modern reworking of the themes in the original, along with additional commentary on the privilege, prejudice and bias, that is relevant to this day.
OUR HIDEOUS PROGENY is a very tightly-written creative spin off of the tale of Frankenstein that beautifully captures the themes in the original, while adding more that will delight readers of historical fiction. Without a doubt, this is one of my favourite reads of the year.
I received an ARC of this book from the author/publisher in exchange for an honest review. Quotes are taken from the ARC and are subject to change upon publication.
LINKS
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It was soooo good! It was so funny to see how McGill talks about East India company and everything controversial 😂
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I really loved how everything was so well included in the conversations and character stories!
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