Love and fury A novel of Mary Wollstonecraft

The lives of trailblazing English proto-feminist writer and philosopher Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter, Frankenstein author Mary Shelley, overlapped by only 11 days as Wollstonecraft tragically died from postpartum infection in 1797. In her second novel, following Mr. Dickens and His Carol (2019), Silva probes the perspective of another literary icon as she imagines Wollstonecraft, weakened from childbirth, telling, at her midwife's suggestion, her life story to her baby over the course of those precious few days. Wollstonecraft's passionate declaration of selfhood carries readers on a wide-ranging, deep journey as she eloquently voices the circumstances shaping her views--being raised in a large family in which her father abused her mother, growing infuriated by gender inequality--as well as her strong attachments to other independent thinkers and her struggles to escape societal constraints. Wollstonecraft ends up doubting that equality is possible in marriages of men and women. Related with superb detail regarding late-eighteenth-century locales and intellectual pursuits, Silva's portrait of the revolutionary Wollstonecraft generates an absorbing tale of courage, sorrow, and the dance between independence and intimacy that delivers a sense of triumphant catharsis.

Silva's gripping, meticulous novel (after Mr. Dickens and His Carol) opens as midwife Parthenia Blenkinsop arrives in North London to help Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin deliver her second child. Though the future Mary Shelley arrives safely, a male doctor's treatment for placental complications gives Wollstonecraft an agonizing, life-threatening infection. Blenkinsop, who stays with the Godwins during the crisis, suggests she distract herself by telling the baby her life story. Wollstonecraft's narrative is one of a childhood shaped by a violent, improvident father and unloving mother. Her intense, volatile emotions and unconventionally defiant ideas about misogyny and the patriarchy find few outlets until, at 16, she meets botanical illustrator Frances Blood, with whom she forms a passionate friendship. She is devastated when Blood dies of consumption 10 years later, but her grief bears fruit in her writing, which brings her influence, freedom, and friendship with some of Europe's leading intellects. Her romances--with married artist Henry Fuseli and scoundrel Gilbert Imlay, with whom she bears an illegitimate daughter--are disastrous before she finds a true partner in Godwin. Short chapters written from pragmatic Blenkinsop's perspective balance Wollstonecraft's turbulent story and evoke the class differences as well as the commonalities between the era's women. Silva's heartbreaking but inspiring work captures the despair and joy, convictions and contradictions of an extraordinary woman. (May)

A fictionalized biography of Mary Wollstonecraft, the pioneering 18th-century feminist and radical thinker who was the mother of Frankenstein author Mary Shelley. Wollstonecraft died at 38, days after having given birth to Mary, her second daughter, and Silva frames the novel as the dying woman's recounting of her life story to her infant. Her reprobate father made her childhood a misery, she remembers, but, already rebellious and brilliant, she had a knack for drawing others to her. John Arden, father of her friend Jane, recognized Wollstonecraft's intelligence and tutored her until Jane began to find Wollstonecraft too unconventional (and needy) to continue their friendship--also a pattern in Wollstonecraft's life despite her intellectual emphasis on independence and feminine self-reliance in her writings. At 18, Wollstonecraft began a romantic friendship with tubercular artist Fanny Blood, but Fanny married for financial security and died in childbirth. After a brief career as a governess in Ireland, Wollstonecraft began a writing career in London supported by flamboyant publisher Joseph Johnson, who introduced her to the likes of William Blake, Thomas Paine, and her future husband, radical philosopher William Godwin, whom she initially disliked. Instead, she fell madly if semiplatonically in love with married painter Henry Fuseli, until he dumped her at his wife's insistence. In Paris to observe the French Revolution, she began a passionate affair with American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, a cad not unlike her father. He fathered her first daughter, Fanny, then broke her heart. Finally Wollstonecraft and Godwin reconnected as soul mates. While Silva works hard to fit in all the details of Wollstonecraft's life with accuracy, the most moving moments belong to her fictitious midwife, kindly Mrs. Blenkinsop. Her intermittent narration of Wollstonecraft's last weeks is meant to provide a workingwoman's adoring view of Wollstonecraft and her domestic life with Godwin but also reveals the midwife's private grief and spiritual growth. Silva's strong visual language enhances an otherwise matter-of-fact retelling of Wollstonecraft's brief, eventful life. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.