Mary Shelley Makes A Monster

Bram Stoker Award nominee 2019.

All our monsters are mirrors. And when Mary Shelley’s second monster (built from her life rather than her pen, born out of biography instead of blood) outlives its mother, that monster goes looking for a substitute. But all the monster really knows of women is that women write, and so the search for a replacement takes it first to Katherine Mansfield, and then to other women who know what mutilated things can be made from ink and mirrors… Virginia Woolf. Janet Frame. Sylvia Plath. Grace Mera Molisa. Octavia Butler. Angela Carter. Murasaki Shikibu. The monster stares into each of them, has their words carved into its tongue, their nails drawn down its back, their toothmarks embedded in its heart.

When it goes out into the world, no-one can tell the difference.

Mary Shelley Makes a Monster
ISBN 9781619761735
Published by Aqueduct Press

Buy at Amazon / Aqueduct Press