Customer Reviews

The Speckled Monster: A Historical Tale of Battling the Smallpox Epidemic

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not since Laurie Garret's THE COMING PLAGUE have I enjoyed a book more. The detail of the research is tremendous and the story it tells-- of a medical breakthrough for the western world despite politics, racism and ignorance is fascinating. It is so easy to lose sight of the true terror caused by this disease. Carrell's work brings it to life.

Maybe it's because I have a degree in both history and English, but this book suited my taste perfectly, and I was surprised at the negative reviews. I picked up the book and finished it in two days because I couldn't put it down. Ms. Carrell has made the tale read like a historical whodunit. I read her chapter, then her endnotes. If you like historical fiction and you also like historical nonfiction, I think you would enjoy this book.

An excellent book that reads like a novel but is the result of detailed research..as the chapter notes prove. More historians should write like this...

Overall, this book is rather interesting. However, there are some aspects of the book that I think are poor and I am surprised that others failed to mention them.

First, we'll start off with the negetive aspects. First and foremost, the book dips in and out from intimate nearness to the characters to cold, infomational-type explaining. I generally feel little toward the characters and am impatient with the inconsistancy. Carrell seems to have trouble with balancing fascinating, animated narrating and dry narration.

Also, her organization is lacking. The weaving of story and information of the era etc proves clumsy and rough. Though never really confusing, it is often inconvenient to the reader. I enjoy the historical, informational parts, I simply wish they were better integrated into the overall story.

The last negetive aspect is her akward grammer. I noticed an alarming amount of improper or incorrect sentences. It doesn't harm in the way of conveying the message, but it often stumbles the reader and forces them to re-read and ponder over the mistakes.

On to the positive aspects. This book is quite fascinating, to put it bluntly. I have read many medical novels or accounts on smallpox, but this is the first historical novel I have been lucky enough to read. It is rife with historical information (obviously), such as the royalty at the time, who died of smallpox that is of importance to the story, conditions at that time, fasion, etc. I am pleased at her attempt to relay the infomation in an interesting, colorful way by making it into a tale instead of a simply narration. It is also unique in that it presents two different individuals' history of smallpox.

Not only is it interesting, but hey, it provides photos. Pictures are always nice, and show smallpox in sickening detail. Various other pictures of people in that era, a map, etc also grace the center of the book. It allows the reader to visualize the people and disease realistically.

Overall, this book is interesting, sound, and informational. Her writing abilities leave something to be wanted, but the content overrules a bad rating. Had Carrell a better editor or had she been a better writer, this book would have been absolutely fantastic. Instead, I reget having to curse the book with less that a perfect score of three stars. I recommend it to anyone interested in 1700s' history or smallpox.

At last, a page turner about smallpox! This brilliant book tells two parallel stories about the discovery of inoculation by the English-speaking world around 1720. On one side of the Atlantic, the aristocratic Lady Mary Worley Montague convinces the Princess of Wales that she should deliberately infect her children to spare them the horror of full-blown smallpox. Unknown to her, Dr. Zabdiel Boylston starts doing the same thing in Boston. In both cases, they were taking medical practices from outsiders, from the Turks and from African-born slaves. The Establishment accused them of attempted murder. After all, they were deliberately infecting people with a disease that was either lethal or disfiguring, and that was certainly contagious. Thank heavens that they did. Reading this book makes one wonder if science is any more able to learn from outside today than it was 275 years ago.

This book kept me up half the night to finish it. Pretty good for a story where the eventual outcome is already well known.

The drama that surrounded Lady Mary in London and Dr. Boylston in Boston as they bravely sought a cure for smallpox, is riveting. Carrell has captured the struggles and triumphs lyrically and intimately. Through her prose, the terror of the disease, its devastation, the times and the heroic actions of a few inspite of the lonley and harsh consequences of their actions, are palpable. This is a long and lush read.

I read this a couple of years ago and still find myself eagerly recommending it to all comers. The events couldn't be more dramatic and the extensive historical research done by the author makes the very well-written story more educational than any textbook of immunology. The endnotes are also well worth reading. I guess for me the power of this story is that with tremendous courage, against tremendous barriers, these two unlikely heroes changed the world for the better. While the lives saved is obviously the major benefit, by any other standard of measurement, particularly economic, this small and relatively inexpensive intervention given at an early stage was shown to be enormously effective and to have incalculable societal benefits downstream. This book is a keeper, one of the small number I will read again. It should be required reading in high school and medical school.

Carrel's historical fictional novel brings to life Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boyleston's efforts to bring inoculation into the medical practice of the western world. I am amazed at how she was able to use letters, diaries, newspapers, and other primary documents to reconstruct what happened. By bringing out the characters as humans, she reminds us that they are not just figures in a history book, but takes us through their emotions and social interactions. Looking back on historical achievements, it may be easy to forget that progress can often be an uphill battle that is met with a lot of resistance.
For example, Carrel brings out the courage that these characters had in facing the strong, and often violent, opposition to inoculation. However, they continued to promote inoculation because of their dedication to fighting smallpox, stemmed from having suffered it themselves and having lost loved ones to the disease. After one of his patients dies from inoculation, Boyleston is described to have a personal moral conflict regarding his culpability in the patient's death. Yet, in just a reading from a history textbook, the reader would not be aware of the characters' personal motivations and emotional trials. Thus, reading this book makes the achievements and contributions of Mary and Boylseton all the more appreciated.
For those skeptics who wonder how much is true and how much is fiction, Carrel provides a detailed delineation in the "notes" appendage. I myself started reading the book wondering, "How does she know all this stuff?". The answer is that she probably is making it up, but writing what probably happened based on primary sources. I am most impressed by the immense amount and the vast diversity of her research, digging through current health statistics, historical journals, and personal correspondences. Most of the discourse and communication is based on actual exchanges preserved in letters, while other anecdotes derive from Lady Mary's granddaughter's recollections. I also appreciate how Carrel was able to take statistics from sources such as the WHO and contextualize it into the time period. I do wish that she would included footnotes in the novel so that the reader could discern fact from fiction while reading.
Despite the fact that the book probably glorified Lady Mary and Boyleston more than is factually accurate, and that it threw in bits not necessarily historically relevant (love stories and affairs), The Speckled Monster is a worthwhile read for those desiring a fuller picture of the historical events in the history of smallpox. However, it is not for those who only desire the facts, nor for those looking for a literary piece of art. I do wish that a director would become inspired by this book to turn it into a movie; this would succeed in bringing the main historical events to public knowledge, showing the personal side of the characters, and flavoring it with some romantic drama - and the audience would only have sacrificed two hours. (PS I would cast Kate Winslet as Mary, Kevin Spacey as Boyleston, and Will Smith as Boylseton's slave).

The Speckled Monster is an unwieldy beast of a book. One part history lesson, one part multilayered drama, Jennifer Carrell uses painstaking research to recreate the tale of the devastating scourge of smallpox and two unsung heroes, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Dr. Zabdiel Boylston, who battled substantial social opposition to save their cities from the deadly scourge. The story details the horrors of smallpox through the interweaving tales of these two protagonists, starting off with a glimpse into the London high life of Lady Mary Wortley. From there it goes on to establish the upbringing of Dr. Zabdiel Boylston and his rise into the role of maverick surgeon in Boston. The rest of the book sees these two tales intertwining, providing historical and intimate perspectives of how smallpox took its toll on the people of London and Boston.

As a piece of historical fiction, The Speckled Monster manages to do its job as both a historical account and as a legitimate drama. The `historical' side of the book is impressive to say the least. Carrell definitely did her research; close to fifty pages of the novel alone are dedicated to historical notes. Facts and events blend in with intricately reimagined events and dialogue between the key players in the smallpox saga. The integration works a bit too well; I found myself wishing that I could tell when fact ended and Carrell's reimaginings began.

While reading the book, however, I felt that the 'drama' was lacking. Carrell starts off the book with a portrayal of the growing Lady Mary that comes off as a bit like a teen drama, with melodramatic, even angsty prose. This section definitely could have used some trimming at the very least so as to get into the more interesting smallpox years sooner. Overall the narrative felt too heavy on the subplots and personal drama; I found myself groaning when the momentum would stop to talk about Lady Mary's strange relationship with Alexander Pope, or Mahler's diary entries.

Carrell's The Speckled Monster ultimately reads like a noble failure; while the history aspect of the book is quite compelling in its illustrating of how the smallpox scourge affected individual lives and social dynamics in London and Boston, the drama that Carrell crafts from the stories of Lady Mary and Zabdiel Boylston leaves much to be desired. The book is perfectly passable as afternoon reading, but if it's just historical fact that you're after, then there are better sources on smallpox that will get the job done.