Love & Other Monsters
Emily Franklin’s transfixing historical novel gives voice to Claire Clairmont, lover of Lord Byron and stepsister of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley.
In 1816, Claire lives with her writer stepsister, Mary, and Mary’s fiancé, poet Percy Shelley. Nearing her eighteenth birthday, intelligent and high-spirited Claire delights in reading the latest novels by Jane Austen. She is also enamored of Lord Byron, a handsome, scandal-plagued poet.
After writing a letter to Byron in London, Claire is caught up in a gradual seduction. She and the poet become lovers. Later, besotted Claire persuades Mary and Percy to spend their vacation near Byron’s Swiss villa. Claire longs for continued romance, but Byron now treats her with detachment and intermittent desire. The summer weather parallels his mercurial moods; Europe experiences unseasonable cold and darkened skies caused by an earlier Indonesian volcanic eruption.
During their stay, Byron proposes that he, Mary, Percy, and Byron’s physician, John Polidori, should each write a “ghost story.” Mary pens Frankenstein; Polidori initiates the literary vampire genre. Claire’s creative talents are marginalized within the group, though. Even Mary regards her stepsister with critical affection, describing her as “merely average.”
Throughout the tempestuous summer, Claire writes in her journal as an emotional outlet. She also befriends the villa’s cook and finds purposeful solace as she forages for wild vegetables and herbs in the surrounding woods. The book’s sensual, immersive prose balances her yearnings and frustrations with the brilliance, insecurities, and quirks of her companions, each of whom is fleshed out with complexity. Intrigues build and dissipate, and Claire’s hopes for an independent life are thwarted by her unexpected pregnancy.
Weaving historical details with notes of natural beauty and the vagaries of genius, the novel Love and Other Monsters reinterprets a woman’s free-spirited passion.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
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