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Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein

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Book Review: Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein

By Charlotte Gullick, Author of By Way of Water, winner of 2007 Christopher Isherwood Fellowship

A good book allows us to fall into another world, creating an alternate landscape that compels and engages beyond ordinary life. Molly Dwyer's Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein offers its fortunate readers many worlds to fall into, and that falling becomes part of the literary ride we embark on. Dwyer has masterfully woven different time periods together, bridging the life of Mary Shelley and our modern-day protagonist, Anna Trevor.

With Anna's arrival in England, the hunt for essential, though elusive, information about Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Lord Byron begins.
Anna's quest challenges her notions of conventional reality, requiring an embrace of the unknown. The book educates as it weaves worlds, casting Mary Shelley in a different light, one that transcends narrow definitions and agendas of feminism. Dwyer celebrates the life of the mind and the body as her characters, both modern day and Romantic, grapple with the moral implications of the philosophic life.

Anna learns that all is connected as she repeatedly tumbles into the world and body of Mary Shelley. In one key section, Anna revisits a college lesson:

"The class was coming back now, as if the ideas were all strung together, which made sense, since they'd practiced the technique while discussing it. Thomas Aquinas had taught the technique saying -- Anna was amazed by the clarity of her recall -- all knowledge has its origins in sensation. She wrote the words in her journal. That was the point: all knowledge has its origins in sensation. That's why the memories are physical."

Each page of Requiem circles around this point, moving readers toward the notion that the interconnectedness of things is more truth than idea. Mary Shelley's father offers this insight through the skillful hand of Dwyer: " . . Books bring about reflection, and reading can do much a schoolmaster cannot. Learning frees the mind. I agree that our current systems of education accomplish little more than the continuance of the oppressive structures . . . The cycle can, and must, be broken by well-reasoned words."

Dwyer does so much more than offer us well-reasoned words; she pierces the human drama, bringing the greats of another age alive and close, making them sensuously real. In resurrecting Shelley and her world, Dwyer transcends the constraints of time to offer not just excellent entertainment, but essential perspective on the power of words and story.

www,mollydwyer.com

I was captivated by Requiem. It totally immersed me in the lives of both Mary Shelley and her contemporary, Anna Trevor. I stayed up all night and through the next day. Really, I could barely stop to eat. I kept thinking just one more chapter, but couldn't put it down until the end. I loved this book!! Molly Dwyer is such a skillful storyteller.

Requiem, and you'll forgive me for shortening the title, manages to defy any one genre: part historical fiction, part Gothic romance with a healthy dose of magical realism. It is the story of author Mary Shelley and her extraordinary, unconventional (and that is putting it mildly) life as experienced by Anna, a modern day American scholar on a research trip to England. It is Anna who finds herself, via a rich tapestry of dreams within other dreams, actually becoming Shelley. Are dreams reality? Where is the line drawn? Is there a line?

The early 19th century was a time of literary upheaval: rebellion against the Enlightenment period, which emphasized reason above all else, arose in the form of Romanticism and placed great importance on emotional interpretation and creation of literature and art. The great authors and poets of the time were not singular entities. They were close friends and confidants; contemporaries who fed off of each other, sharing ideas, beliefs, and even (so it's been claimed) their spouses.

Ms. Dwyer cleverly immerses us in Mary Shelley's life and that of all of her contemporaries: her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and essayist Charles Lamb, to name a few. Their lives were filled with passion, betrayal and heart wrenching loss. They threw societal mores and values out the window and paid the ultimate price. The superb narrative in Requiem is so compelling that the reader receives a first-rate education in Romanticism without realizing it.

Ms. Dwyer demonstrates a command of the time period with accurate historic details and realistic dialogue, neither of which bogs down the narrative. The story immerses you an exciting period of literary history when boundaries were pushed and broken.

Highly recommended for your own personal reading enjoyment, I would also recommend Requiem as an extraordinary book club selection - there's enough fascinating material here to keep a book club occupied for months! If you are familiar with Mary Shelley and her intimate circle of Romantic Poets, this book will delight you. If you aren't, I'd venture to say that Requiem surpasses most college courses on the Romantics available today. Either way, this book is a treat.

Molly Dwyer's Historical Fiction account of the early life of Mary Shelley and her equally famous contemporaries, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, is written in a way that transports the reader into the scenes where you are not so much an observer but a participant. Although the reader cannot influence the story, you feel like you are part of the story, almost like an added character, because of the vivid imagery and understanding of the real character's thoughts and feelings.
I generally read at night to help me fall asleep but I found that I kept reading into the night. I would set a limit of one chapter but found I would read at least two or three before I forced myself to turn out the light.
I literally forgot I was reading and became immersed in the action and scenery of the story.
The manner in which Ms Dwyer interweaves a contemporary and historical story line is accomplished in a smooth and seamless manner, and at times meshes them together in the same time and space.
A great book to "get away from it all" when you can't afford the time or expense of an actual vacation. How about a quick visit to England, France and Italy? "Requiem" is your vehicle of transport.

Although I have read the work of Mary Shelly and of the Romantic Poets, I now feel that I have had the pleasure of meeting them by accompanying the protagonist, Anna Trevor through her dream like encounters with Mary Shelly which border on a spiritual if not actual embodiment of Shelly. It is through this bond between past and present that we enter into the life of Mary Shelly and share her encounters with Percy Shelly, Byron and others.
Requiem is finely crafted and the bridge between the past and the present gives an immediacy to the lives it traces whether it be Anna's in the present or those in the past.
I feel rewarded not only by the pleasure I took in reading Requiem but also by the way it has inspired me to reread Mary Shelly, Percy Shelly and Byron with a new insight into their work.

I was glancing through the reviews on Amazon and the one from John Lescroart caught my eye. He called this novel ambitious. What an accurate term. I'd also add unique, because I've never read a story quite like this one.

There are two separate stories told, one of Mary Shelley, the author of FRANKENSTEIN and the other of Anna Trevor, who feels she has a paranormal connection with the historical figure. Previously, Anna lost a son in an accident. She blames herself as well as her husband. Her marriage was on a shaky foundation and caved under the stress. Now, she has been given an opportunity to present a paper about Mary Shelley and ends up in England where she meets an elderly aunt. It is through this aunt the gateway between Anna's world and Mary's strengthens.

Molly Dwyer will fascinate lovers of history with the realism of Mary Shelley and her relationship with Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. The book is part a ghost story, part love story, but mostly a historical story. I walked away with a renewed since of gratitude in the freedoms we have today compared to Mary's time.

The fact that my rating isn't a five out of five reflect negatively on the author. The book was 600 pages and I'm ADD. For me, there were a few lulls in the story. Readers without an attention disorder will probably remain immersed throughout.

If you have been looking for that perfect summer book, something that fully engages heart, mind and soul, look no further. Ms. Dwyer's book is a marvelous read. Part literary history, part mystery, part travelogue, ever astute, this book occupies the reader on multiple levels. We follow a sympathetic, contemporary protagonist, Anna Trevor, as she rediscovers the charted and uncharted waters of the 19th century English Romantics. Where Anna leads, into the spiritual heart of the Romantics, we gladly follow.

Dwyer's command of her material is evident from the outset. A prologue recounts in vivid detail an actual hanging that took place around the corner from Mary Godwin Shelley's father's bookstore. It is Dwyer's great gift that she can integrate this factual material so seamlessly with her own skillful storytelling. And she can write. Wonderful descriptive passages make stones speak and the dead walk.

The Latin word cantare, to sing, via the French enchanter, became the Middle English enchant, to put under a spell. Like Homer's Odysseus, and Dwyer's Anna, we find ourselves just that, in thrall to a siren's song.

Pure enchantment. Forget about summer reading, this is great reading year round.

I was immediately swept into the enchanting waters of this historical fiction, a world of magical realism from beginning to end. A fantastic voyage - both literally and figuratively. Dwyer makes the seemingly unbelievable believable - transporting the reader through a looking-glass world where both the past - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - and the present - Anna Trevor, our protagonist - meet. It's an engaging synchronistic journey of discovery. Compelling characters. Exquisite storytelling.

Todd Crawshaw, author of the novel, Exploits of the Satyr