A Fatal Likeness

by Lynn Shepherd

• ISBN10: 0345532449
• ISBN13: 9780345532442
• Publish Date: 20 August 2013 (first published 1 January 2013)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Delacorte Press
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 363
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

I read an advance copy of this novel received through LibraryThing's Early Reviews program. I had originally signed up to receive a copy because I had just read [b:Frankenstein|18490|Frankenstein|Mary Shelley|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1311647465s/18490.jpg|4836639] for the first time a few months ago, and I was intrigued by the idea of reading a mystery spun around the author and her husband. The copy of Frankenstein that I read contained biographical information about the pair, but nothing that really addressed anything personal about who they were.

I also read Lynn Shepherd's book [b:The Solitary House|13147813|The Solitary House|Lynn Shepherd|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1333577737s/13147813.jpg|18325458] in preparation for reading this one, since they both followed the same main character, private investigator Charles Maddox. That ended up not being necessary, since they are stand-alone stories. A Fatal Likeness does make small references to the first book, and the exposition about Charles Maddox and the other characters in his household is not really repeated for a new reader's benefit. However, while The Solitary House was very much so about Charles and his household, A Fatal Likeness uses them only to serve as the backdrop for focusing on the Shelleys. I forgot much of the time that Charles was part of the story.

Lynn Shepherd emphasizes in her afterword that this was a fictional novel. However, she also takes the time to lay out what biographers and contemporaries of the Shelleys have said about them, and she explains where and why she added her own fictional solutions to the gaps in our knowledge about the pair. One thing that Shepherd conveys that I didn't appreciate from the biographical information included in my copy of Frankenstein was just how young these people were, and how at odds they were with the rest of society at the time. She also did an excellent job bringing them to life and injecting personality into them. While this may or may not be an accurate reflection of them, since this IS fiction, it made for a wonderful read. It's also made me very interested to learn more about them, and Shepherd recommends a good number of books that she relied on for her research for anyone wanting to read more.

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

In 1850, a young detective takes on a new case unlike anything seen before; Charles Maddox’s client is the surviving son of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Shelley. Maddox has to track down some papers concerning the Shelleys that could be used for blackmail and ruin their literary legacy. This will take him into investigating the dark lives of not just Percy Bysshe Shelley but all the young Romantics and question the cause of death for Shelley’s first wife, Harriet.

This was a really difficult book to review but I will try hard to be fair and explore the two contradicting opinions I have about this book. First of all, I read this book with not much knowledge of the Romantics; I knew basics but I hadn’t explored them as much as I would have liked. I’ve been a fan of this literary movement even since the start of my reading life and most of you know that Frankenstein remains my favourite novel of all time. So when I heard about this book, I knew I wanted to read it.

Reading the book, I found it interesting; the writing style really reminded me of the time. Yet at times I felt like the writing was trying to reflect the time and sometimes it just did not feel right. I found myself rereading paragraphs trying to pick up what bothered me about them. I never really found the problem, I do not even think it was the writing that was my problem but more of the tone, but more on that later. When it comes to the mystery, everything felt pretty straightforward, piece by piece slowly revealed until the reader finally knows what was going on.

While I did have some problems with the book, all in all I was enjoying the book and would give it a rating of three stars, maybe three and a half. I didn’t find out much about the protagonist Charles Maddox as I would have liked but this could be because this detective appears in Lynn Shepherd’s other novel Tom-All-Alone. If I had read this book first I might have a different opinion towards Maddox. Which brings me to my problems; A Treacherous Likeness would have been a decent novel if it wasn’t using literary legends. This book made me want to explore more about the Romantic Movement, to its credit, but this was also its downfall.

After finishing this novel, I’ve been dipping in and out of three different books; The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler; Young Romantics: The Tangled Lives of English Poetry’s Greatest Generation by Daisy Hay; and Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer by Richard Holmes. All these Non-Fiction books are vastly different but I picked them to get more of an insight on the lives of the Shelleys. Now the Romantics are wonderfully complex people with equally complex relationships and I don’t understand what their lives were like but the creative licence this author took in A Treacherous Likeness to weave this story through only leads me to think one thing. With all I’ve learnt about Percy Bysshe Shelley and the others I’ve come to the conclusion that Lynn Shepherd mustn’t like them at all.

I’ve got more to learn about the lives of the great poets but after reading some of the non-fiction of the time and reflecting back on A Treacherous Likeness I can’t help thinking, while the author has excellent knowledge on these people there has to be hatred towards them as well. In A Treacherous Likeness there are the controversial statements of Mary Shelley not writing Frankenstein, killing her baby and with Percy Bysshe Shelley’s help pushing Harriett to suicide. While they have merit and we can’t be sure if these are true or not they still point towards a dislike of these people, Mary Shelley in particular. This could be the author’s attempt to weave her story through the facts and create this complex mystery; for me, after all the research it just comes across in a negative way.

I have a lot to learn about the Romantic Movement and I have to give A Treacherous Likeness credit for the re-spark in my interest in these people. I am not trying to be negative towards Lynn Shepherd; I think she has a great writing style and hope that she continues writing historical mysteries. I would prefer if it wasn’t based on real people because when it comes to the Romantics and Mary Shelley, I still adore them and don’t like to read anything that paints them in a horrible light. Sure they were not the nicest people, they made many mistakes but we can’t deny what they did for literature. I think I will have to try Tom-All-Alone one day just so I’m not judging this author on just one experience; her writing is worth reading, I just had some issues with this novel.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/04/24/book-review-a-treacherous-likeness/