Hideous Love

September 9, 2013
Hemphill’s fictional autobiography-in-verse of Mary Shelley focuses on her domestic life, which makes for a gripping story while diminishing its subject. Mary’s awe for her famous philosopher father sets the stage for her hero-worship of her husband, poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Mary girlishly finds his interest in her flattering, and he leaves his wife to run away with her, scandalizing Mary’s family. Shelley tells Mary she has “great things to write./ It is your lovely fate,” and treats her as an intellectual equal; Hemphill (Wicked Girls) portrays writing and motherhood as Mary’s greatest joys. However, Mary also idealizes Percy despite his clear failings: financial mismanagement, jealous hypochondria during her pregnancies, and a selfish interest in free love, including a likely lengthy affair with her stepsister as they “travel as a threesome/ once again like/ some tiresome, rickety wheelbarrow.” Painting Mary’s feelings about Percy as simplistic devotion, despite his repeatedly appalling behavior, makes her a frustrating character as time goes on. Hemphill’s verse can be elegant, but also jerky and staccato, limiting the story’s complexity and, ironically, Mary’s ability to express herself. Ages 13–up.

September 1, 2013

Gr 8 Up-Hemphill's ability to plumb the depths of an author's pain and despair is evident in this examination of the life of Mary Shelley, best known as the author of Frankenstein and wife of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. This present-tense novel in verse provides an intimate glimpse into Mary's life. In addition to pondering questions of life and death, Hemphill explores morality, fidelity, creation, and pain. Mary's personal life reads like a soap opera. At age 16, she meets Percy and months later they elope, abandoning his pregnant wife, Harriet. The couple lives throughout Europe and, following Harriet's suicide, eventually marry. Mary's life is filled with emotionally scarring events, including the deaths of her mother, sister, and children, which she feels "like a thousand knives/have been thrust upon me." She also struggles with Percy's flirtations with her stepsister and with her complicated relationship with Lord Byron. Her tempestuous life becomes a catalyst for her writing. "My protagonist, Victor Frankenstein, /builds his creature of graveyard parts/before he sets out to animate it/through science. I construct/my characters beginning with people/I know and then add/or rearrange other aspects of personality/to fit my plot." Readers will identify the parallels between the creation of a monster and the creation of her famous book.-Barbara M. Moon, Suffolk Cooperative Library System, Bellport, NY

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2013
A fictionalized verse biography of the tortured genius behind Frankenstein. Hemphill here turns her poetic sights on the young life of 19th-century English prose master Mary Shelley (1797-1851), who famously authored Frankenstein at the tender age of 20. Much as she did with Sylvia Plath (Your Own, Sylvia, 2007), the author explores the particular challenges facing a gifted female artist who allies herself with a renowned male poet. Central to the plot is the parentage of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering feminist philosopher who died days after Mary was born, and William Godwin, a radical political philosopher who espoused free love for all but his daughters. In her father's salon, Mary meets her future husband, budding Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, when she is only 16; he is 21 and married. Though initially finding Percy "fairylike / with the curly blond hair / of a schoolgirl" and "hands frail as silk stockings," Mary soon becomes smitten, especially with the attention Shelley pays her intellect. When her father forbids her to see him, Mary runs off with him, beginning their exile in Europe, which leads to the birth of some of the greatest Romantic literature of the day and a raft of brutal personal tribulations for Mary. A bleak but riveting portrait of the artist as a young woman. (author's note, biographical notes, Shelley bibliography, suggested reading) (Poetry. 13 & up.)

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