She soon finds herself meeting people in the present with connections to the people she’s writing about in the past — and as if that’s not strange enough, Anna’s dreams begin to spill into her waking life, making her question whether they are dreams at all. With Lord Byron appearing in his library and Mary Shelley in the cellar of a decrepit old Bed and Breakfast, Anna is not sure whether she’s losing her mind or her place in time and space. When she begins to live Mary Shelley’s life in the past, she makes the choice to believe the past and present are not separate realities — that in fact, all time is present time, and she has the chance to participate in the unfolding of Mary Shelley’s genius, the better to chronicle it for the inspiration of future women.
It’s an ambitious undertaking, and one that the reader can appreciate even when it stumbles slightly. The modern day thread of the story does not read as well as the Romantic period, as Gothic Romantic language falls uneasily on the ear in a modern setting. My sympathy tended to be with the sceptics Anna encounters as she collapses in hallways and falls into dreams. When a sex scene involving Anna and her new lover is described as: “They were moving in concord now, moving as one in their pleasure dome, rocking and cooing, squeezing and holding, swooning together,” it seems more overwrought than erotic. But when the action shifts to Mary Shelley and her circle, the Romantic language fits like a glove, and, oddly, the descriptions of relationships are more grounded and earthier than those of the present.
Dwyer brings the past to meticulously researched and believable life. As soon as the narrative settles into a sustained look at Mary Shelley’s life, the novel is absolutely gripping, from the wonderful excerpts taken from writings of everyone involved, but particularly Mary, to the complicated relationship dynamics between Mary Shelley, her half-sister Claire, Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. With each of these characters willing to break convention to live a revolutionary life, and suffering the consequences, their story is enthralling and heart breaking, with enough love and hurt inflicted to keep the reader riveted.
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