Reviewing A Novel of Generations by Theresa Gauthier

 Her Lost Words by Stephanie Marie Thornton

What an unexpected read. I was looking for something different, something that was a complete departure from what I’ve been reading. Historical fiction has been calling to me so when I had the chance to read a preview ebook copy of this title, I thought, “Why not?” I’m so glad I did.

Thornton’s book is a dual POV historical tale from the perspectives of Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley. I admit I knew little about either woman before I started reading, and I do know that the narrative of the novel isn’t 100% accurate. The author delves into what she changed and why in the notes at the end of the story, and, for the most part, I think she made sound decisions for the sake of moving the story along.

Wollstonecraft was an accomplished feminist writer in her day publishing treatises, novels, a children’s book, a travel book, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and, her most well-known work, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects. Published in 1792 and calling for equal rights for women and arguing that women were not inferior to men but were instead only less educated.

The work was well-received, though her reputation was destroyed upon the posthumous publication of a memoir her husband wrote that revealed her unorthodox past. 

Mary Wollstonecraft died 11 days after giving birth to her more famous daughter, Mary Shelley (born Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin). The second Mary is, of course, famous for having written Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus. The younger Mary married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. 

There was a lot of condensing of theses women’s lives. The author, Thornton, eliminated siblings and children and combined some to have fewer characters with which to deal. She chose also to present Percy and Mary as devoted to each eschewing the commonly held notion that Percy was a ladies man and could never have been faithful. Thornton explained that she based this decision on Mary’s conviction that her husband was always faithful to her. We’ll never know the truth, but I like Thornton’s take on it.

The book is well-written, well-researched, and certainly compelling. There’s violence in some of these pages, but given that a good deal of it is describing events that took place during the French Revolution, we have to assume there was a great deal of blood being spilled at the time.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading about these women. It did make me wonder why in the world the ideas of equal rights for women are still denied by so many when they were espoused with such eloquence in 1792.

The novel is just that, a novel, and in the end, though it opens the door to learning more about history, the story told in these pages is worth reading whether you have a casual interest in feminism, Frankenstein, or the French Revolution or if you’re well-versed in all of these things.

Pick it up! Like me, you’ll be glad you did!