“It was beneath the trees of the grounds belonging to our house, or on the bleak sides of the woodless mountains near, that my true companions, the airy flights of my imagination, were born and fostered.”

These haunting and prophetic words were uttered in 1816 by Mary Shelley, who was just 20 years old when she penned FRANKENSTEIN. The Halloween season just wouldn’t be the same without this classic work. So I was thrilled to get my hands on Anne Eekhout’s MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN, which focuses on two periods in Mary’s life --- as a 15-year-old who was introduced to dark, gothic stories by her family and circle of friends in 1812 Scotland; and four years later, in the Lake Geneva mansion of the great Lord Byron.

"MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN will appeal to all fans of Mary Shelley and stands equally strong as a fine piece of historical fiction."

Mary and her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley --- along with Lord Byron, Dr. John Polidori, and Mary’s half-sister, Claire --- are at the Villa Diodati for a weekend of surreal experiences. Byron suggests that they each try to write the best ghost story. The result of this hallucinogenic experiment will be the basis not only for Polidori’s classic “The Vampyre,” the predecessor to DRACULA, but also for FRANKENSTEIN.

The events in 1812 are a nice juxtaposition to this eventual meeting and is the more fictionalized portion of the novel. Eekhout seeks to flesh out not only the evening of Mary’s greatest literary work, but also the impetus from her youth that originally spurred her down the path towards the supernatural and unknown. Here, various books with supernatural elements are discussed and recommended, including Horace Walpole’s THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO and Ann Radcliffe’s THE MYSTERIES OF UDOLPHO. This younger version of Mary is fascinated by these tales but is more intrigued by her bizarre cousin, Isabella Baxter.

Isabella seems to be obsessed with a monstrous creature she claims to have seen that comes from the sea. Her knack for scaring and seeking out all things that go bump in the night appeals to Mary in ways she never thought about before. Isabella continues to conjure up tales about witches from Scotland, and she seems quite serious about the subject. Mary does not know what to think when Mr. Booth, Isabella's brother-in-law, comes up to her and says she’s in danger: “Isabella is not who you think she is.”

Such eerie passages pierce the veil of this creepy novel consistently and makes the proceedings play out like a work of literary horror. I must admit that the Lake Geneva passage is the best depiction of that infamous night I have ever experienced next to Gothic, the fever-dream of a film starring Gabriel Byrne, Julian Sands, Natasha Richardson and Timothy Spall. MARY AND THE BIRTH OF FRANKENSTEIN will appeal to all fans of Mary Shelley and stands equally strong as a fine piece of historical fiction.