Mary Bennet is famously the odd one out among her bright, vivacious sisters – an awkward show-off and a bore. But in this book, it’s what Mary’s doing off the page that deserves attention.
This book is part-sequel, part-companion to the fabulous The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennet, Witch, which I read and greatly enjoyed last year. You haven’t got to read that book to enjoy this one – Mary and Lydia are after all not exactly close – but there’s definitely some things which happen in this book which don’t make much sense unless you know what’s happened there.
Mary’s stiff, repressed voice is very different to Lydia’s bubbly one, but is no less compelling for it. She’s a intricate character – intelligent but very lacking in insight at the same time, and her struggle between the propriety she feels she must display as the least of the Bennet sisters and her true nature and inclinations is compelling. The central conflict between Mary and the man she ends up raising from the dead – both before and after his resurrection – is dark, thorny, and thoroughly, truly Gothic.
I enjoyed the romance between Mary and Georgiana, but I did think it arrived a bit late in the game and definitely played second fiddle to the intense and destructive relationship between Mary and Septimus – I’m pretty sure the latter character thought he was in a retelling of Wuthering Heights, not Pride and Prejudice! It does make sense for Mary to need a more low-key and gentle relationship, but it definitely needed more legs to stand up to the Mary-and-Mr.-Pike show. The ‘science’ is also a bit hand-wavey, but I guess that’s true in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein too.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.