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Against the odds, by concentrating on its author, Anne Eekhout’s new novel, "Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein" (translated from the Dutch by Laura Watkinson), makes Mary Shelley’s life story more involving than most revisited novels based on classics.
In her new historical novel the Dutch author recreates the fabled 1816 weekend when an 18-year-old Mary Shelley, trapped by a storm at Lord Byron's rented Swiss estate, conjured the horror tale "Frankenstein."
Ruth Franklin reviews three novels that variously reimagine “Frankenstein” and the life of its author, Mary Shelley, in light of historical and contemporary conceptions of gender: Anne Eekhout’s “Mary and the Birth of Frankenstein,” C. E. McGill’s “Our Hideous Progeny,” and Louisa Hall’s “Reproduction.”