Transformation

Written by Mary Shelley

Narrated by B. J. Harrison

Guido has lost it all. At rock bottom, and while wandering the shore, Guido spies a misshapen creature floating toward him in the water, riding on a huge chest. The creature offers Guido a path of revenge – switching bodies for three days in exchange for the untold riches in the chest. Guido unfortunately fails to see a potential down side.

Through skillful handling of the gothic motif of the doppelgänger, Shelley’s tale explores concepts that would eventually culminate into her masterpiece – Frankenstein.

• Language: English
• Publisher: B.J. Harrison
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781950524976

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was an English novelist. Born the daughter of William Godwin, a novelist and anarchist philosopher, and Mary Wollstonecraft, a political philosopher and pioneering feminist, Shelley was raised and educated by Godwin following the death of Wollstonecraft shortly after her birth. In 1814, she began her relationship with Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she would later marry following the death of his first wife, Harriet. In 1816, the Shelleys, joined by Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont, physician and writer John William Polidori, and poet Lord Byron, vacationed at the Villa Diodati near Geneva, Switzerland. They spent the unusually rainy summer writing and sharing stories and poems, and the event is now seen as a landmark moment in Romanticism. During their stay, Shelley composed her novel Frankenstein (1818), Byron continued his work on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-1818), and Polidori wrote “The Vampyre” (1819), now recognized as the first modern vampire story to be published in English. In 1818, the Shelleys traveled to Italy, where their two young children died and Mary gave birth to Percy Florence Shelley, the only one of her children to survive into adulthood. Following Percy Bysshe Shelley’s drowning death in 1822, Mary returned to England to raise her son and establish herself as a professional writer. Over the next several decades, she wrote the historical novel Valperga (1923), the dystopian novel The Last Man (1826), and numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction. Recognized as one of the core figures of English Romanticism, Shelley is remembered as a woman whose tragic life and determined individualism enabled her to produce essential works of literature which continue to inform, shape, and inspire the horror and science fiction genres to this day.

Reviews for Transformation

[josephcamilleri-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Mary Shelley is best known for "Frankenstein" and, to a lesser extent, her end-of-days novel "The Last Man". However, apart from a number of other novels, she also wrote several short stories, often with a supernatural or fantastic theme. Three of these are included in this attractive paperback edition published by Hesperus Classics. The title piece - "Transformation" - describes the narrator's Faustian pact with a devilish dwarf, and is rich in Gothic tropes. "The Mortal Immortal" features a hapless protagonist who drinks an elixir of life and eventually discovers that immortality is more of a bane than a blessing. "The Evil Eye" is a tale of warring tribes and family feuds set in the Balkans. Despite its title, its subject is not overtly supernatural but, in its exoticism and unexpected plot twists it recalls respectively the "Oriental Gothic" and the then budding genre of "sensation literature". All three stories are finely crafted and reveal an active imagination at work. "Frankenstein" was certainly no one-off.

[michael5rimmer · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a good little book: just three stories collected together, but they're all interesting.

The first two are in the Gothic tradition: the title story, Transformation is a story of about the squandering of youth's potential, of decadence and selfishness. A morality tale, but not overbearingly so. The scene of Guido on the desolate shore, meeting with the dwarf cast up from the stormy sea is very effective.

The second story, The Mortal Immortal tells of the growing loneliness and despair felt by Winzy (who considers himself to be a young immortal, being only 323 years old) as all that he knows and loves passes away. This is a take on the Sorcerer's Apprentice motif and the most tragic in tone of the three stories.

The last story, The Evil Eye, is not Gothic, but would, I'm sure, have been received as rather exotic at the time of its original publication (1829). Set in Albania and Greece, this is a tale of sibling rivalry, vengeance and treachery, piracy, banditry and abduction. The unlikely coincidences are forgiveable in such an engagingly-told story.

I liked the way Shelley switched the focus on characters as you're not at first sure where your sympathies should lie. I think it's good when authors skew your expectations and don't immediately give you everything on a plate.

[clfisha · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The first two stories are the best and are set firmly in the gothic horror cannon, tales of doppelgangers and immortality, filled with high emotion and evocative prose. The last is more of an adventure tale and I liked it a lot less. I found the style jarring, too much like a long list of rushed facts and so I was unable to connect with the theme of loss it was supposed to engender . Still overall the book was enjoyable but far too short to recommend you buy it. I love Heserpus books but they could have included more tales!