Book excerpt: "Love, Sex, and Frankenstein" by Caroline Lea

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Caroline Lea, the author of "The Glass Woman," returns with a reimagining of how young Mary Shelley created her classic horror novel.

"Love, Sex, and Frankenstein" (Pegasus) brings to life that dark summer on Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and Mary's lover, Percy Shelley, in 1816, capturing the thunder and thrill of a young woman awakening to her own awesome power.

Read an excerpt below.

"Love, Sex, and Frankenstein" by Caroline Lea

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Dear Reader,

You are eighteen years old. Cast out by your father, shunned by society, you have fled to Geneva with your lover and your sister. The closeness of their relationship makes you furious, but if you protest, your lover will abandon you. Confined by terrible storms, you find yourself in a house with your lover, your sister and Lord Byron, an infamous and magnetically attractive poet. You know he is dangerous, but you find yourself drawn to him. When he sets a challenge to write a ghost story, all the turmoil that has boiled within you finds a voice.

The anger pours from your pen in a roar of rage. Even as the monster that emerges terrifies you, you understand that it belongs to you. This creature that crawls across the page is the woman you were always meant to be. And in Byron, this furious beast that you have kept hidden for so long may have found a mate. You are eighteen years old. The creature you have created will howl its way onto page and stage and screen, burning its path across history in its desire to be seen, to be known, to be loved. The monster will never be silenced. Neither will you.

Prologue

Geneva, 1816

At dusk, the sky over Lake Geneva is the colour of blood in a glass of water. The ash fragments falling over the city form a strange fog – a thickening of the air, which swirls through the deserted streets, past the spire of the old cathedral and over the walls of the new Protestant church. Inside, people are on their knees, praying for the uncanny cloud to lift. It is a judgement, they fear, a punishment from God, or else a curse.

This night, like so many before it, the choking dust has driven the residents of the city into the shelter of shuttered houses and places of prayer. Outside, there is no one to witness the way the ash gleams as it settles on the lake. The water flickers and shimmers, each tiny filament glowing like a candle, sinking into the silence, quickly snuffed out.

The lake is chill and dark and deep – not even the fishermen have fathomed its depths, or the small children who, on any other evening, would be taking turns to dive beneath the surface, competing to see who could swim down the furthest, stay under the longest.

No one is standing on the lake's stony shores to watch the water's surface glow, red as the strange sky above. No one is there to see the darkness beneath the water shift and stir and coalesce, parting for a breath, like two slick thighs, which fall back into the darkness with a gasp that is almost human.

Above, half masked by cloud, a thin slash of moon hangs hazy and indifferent. A lone figure stumbles down to the lake and scrambles into a small rowboat that one of the fishermen has left bobbing at the end of a long line. Looking right, then left, the man leans forward over the rope. Flash of steel from the blade in his hand. A quick tug and the boat is free. The man settles himself on the rocking boards, tugging the oars. No one will see him on this cloud-deadened, mist-muffled night. No one will stop him. Still, his breath stutters and stumbles. He must be quick. His hands ache, his chest burns. His eyes feel gritty as the mist parts before him, then closes around him, giving him the strange sensation of being swallowed.

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"Love, Sex, and Frankenstein" by Caroline Lea

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