Our Hideous Progeny is a novel that juggles so much - speculative science, gothic themes and atmosphere, whispers and backstabbing, betrayal and hope and, perhaps most importantly, dinosaurs.
Then there’s the subtly growing friendship and potentially romantic bond between Mary and her husband’s younger sister. She lost a newborn child and he has been secretly gambling away their money instead of dealing with his grief. Mary and her geologist husband Henry also have their own marital issues. Set in the 1850s, Our Hideous Progeny follows Victor Frankenstein’s great niece, Mary, as she and her husband attempt to make names for themselves within the world of science.Īt a time when the newly-discovered fossils of prehistoric creatures have taken the world by storm, for a woman to discover that her great uncle, mad though he may have been, might have been able to reanimate a dead thing and conquer death, is a very exciting thing to learn. McGill’s Our Hideous Progeny really is a worthy successor to Shelley’s masterpiece. And for that novel to be as good as it is? That feels impossible.Īnd yet, C.E. It takes an incredibly amount of courage and self-assurance for anyone to write a spiritual sequel to Frankenstein even more to make that their debut novel. It is romantic and sensual and beautiful. She haunted the Charterhouse and admires Sand from the shadows, digging into her memories and learning more about her - the masculine clothes she wears and the name she has chosen.īriefly, A Delicious Life is a historical novel that revels in pleasure: sexual desire, food, beautiful scenery.
Our narrator, however, is the ghost of a young girl who died five hundred years earlier, and quickly becomes smitten with the beautiful George Sand. With him is French author George Sand, with whom Chopin has been having a love affair. Here, that artist is Chopin, who has contracted consumption and has come to Mallorca for rest and recovery. Similar to Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet (below), this novel places a celebrated male artist at the centre but focusses its attention on those lesser-known people around him.
Nell Stevens’ debut novel, Briefly, A Delicious Life, is one of the most sensual, sexy, and satisfying historical novels you’re ever likely to read.
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