Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill
Our Hideous Progeny by C. E. McGill
The rundown: Mary, the great-niece of Victor Frankenstein, is keen to make her name in this world of science alongside her geologist husband, Henry—but without wealth and connections their options are limited. When Mary discovers some old family papers that allude to the shocking truth behind her great-uncle’s past, she thinks she may have found the key to securing their professional and financial future.
The review: I love retellings that bring something fresh and unexpected to the story, and McGill delivers on this nicely with her paleontological lens. She deviates in wonderful ways, but there are also some wonderful Easter eggs. For example, Mary dreams on the golden eye of her creation, mirroring the original Mary’s dream that sparked the story. The Promethean references Mary and Henry make to stealing fire from God make this nerdy book lover’s heart sing.
Mary makes for such an interesting character, in general and as the instigator of their monstrous experiment. Mary has a hot temper, a proud streak. She learns the lesson, early in the story, that she must contain her outrage (walk the line) in order to be able to participate in the communities which she finds herself intrigued by. But as she continues to suffer from the cruel apathy of the scientific community, the vitriolic misogyny from those who wish her ill, and the thousand tiny, terrible betrayals by Henry, Mary increasingly struggles to smother her anger, until eventually she gives up playing nice. The original themes of ethics versus scientific progress work nicely with Mary’s fury at the limitations placed on her ambition in the scientific community.
I loved how McGill constructed an entirely different relationship between creator and created. Mary immediately loves the monster and finds it beautiful. To her, it is a monster not in that it is terrible, but in that it is strange and different. Mary being female also provides an interesting avenue to explore creation through two different lenses: one of gestation and birth and one of scientific creation. The success of one and “failure” of another is both an internal source of conflict for Mary and also an external source as she battles her male colleagues’ assumption that she sees their creation as a replacement for her lost child. That McGill has Mary explicitly reject that argument, that the book grapples with the belief that she cannot separate her two progenies is so satisfying.
And this really is a story about Mary, about her experiences in the scientific community and creating the monster, with less focus on the monster itself. The story starts off quite slow, very much character-driven, though the plot does pick up in intensity after she discovers the fateful letters about her great-uncle’s monster nearly a third of the way into the book.
Goes well with: If you’re interested in more unique takes on the Frankenstein story, check out Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi or Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai. Reproduction by Louisa Hall is also, if more loosely, inspired by Mary Shelley.