Randy’s latest for Halloween is the second in a series (the first book was reviewed earlier in the month) that takes Gothic tropes and re-imagines them for a modern readership.
From the Oxford English Dictionary, Monster:
“2. Something extraordinary or unnatural; an amazing event or occurrence; a prodigy, a marvel. Obsolete.”
JUSTINE: …Irene had the most fascinating books! So many writers I had not read – she told me later that they were modern, writing in experimental styles. Sort of like you, Catherine.
CATHERINE: Well, not in the Astarte books. I don’t know if this is going to sell as well as the Astarte books. I mean, people don’t necessarily like to be experimented on. Not even by fiction.
— comments from the characters about European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman
The second adventure of the Athena Club after The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman begins three months after that first adventure and follows our heroines crossing Europe to help a young woman and then on to attend a meeting of a secret society and convince them of the folly of their ways.
Naturally, there are complications.
A letter arrives from Lucinda Van Helsing of Vienna, who is in fear of her father. Professor Abraham Van Helsing is a member of the Societe des Alchimistes and he is experimenting on Lucinda and her mother. Advised by her friend Mina Murray, who was formerly governess to Mary Jekyll, Lucinda asks for help from the Athena Club, the members of which are Mary, Catherine Moreau, Beatrice Rappaccini, Justine Frankenstein and Diana Hyde, with assistance from Mrs. Poole, their invaluable housekeeper, and Alice the maid, demur to the point of mousy yet capable of remarkable improvisations in tight spots.
After helping him solve the murders in Whitechapel, Mary began working for Sherlock Holmes, contributing her earnings to the upkeep of the household. She informs him of Lucinda’s plight and the Club’s intentions to travel to Vienna. Since learning of its existence, Holmes has expressed keen interest in the further stirrings of the Societe des Alchimistes. Though unable to join the women, he offers financial aid for taking the speediest form of transportation, the Orient Express. Mary, reluctantly, accepts; she appreciates the need for haste, but Mary worries about their ability to finance themselves and her ability to remain independent. As in the first novel, financial independence is a recurring anxiety, as it would have been for any unmarried, orphaned young woman at that time.
Actions by adversaries from their previous adventure split the Athena Club as Catherine, with some help from Alice, investigates those adversaries in England while Mary and Justine head to Vienna. Beatrice, because of her poisonous condition in enclosed spaces, and Diana, because she’s Diana and still a teen and craves adventure and not easily corralled or directed and usually only kept safe against her will, are to stay in London as a point of contact for the others.
Naturally, there are complications.
The three streams of Athena Club members struggle with their assignments, each group worried about their own competence and the fate of their new sisters, especially when those in London lose contact with Mary and Justine. In the meantime the members meet, among others, Sigmund Freud, Irene Norton, the Countess Karnstein and a Dr. Raymond, who has a “daughter” of his own named Helen. Also a character from a novel by H. Rider Haggard appears near the end and could well be a force in the next novel.
All the while the members of the Athena Club work to reach Budapest where …
… Naturally, there are complications. Not surprising since this novel is of the one-damned-thing-after-another variety, including the emergence of foes from the first novel, unwanted family reunions, a dastardly plot, duplicity, betrayal, kidnapping, breaking and entering, attack by vampire, joining the circus and the constant struggle by these women to overcome the weight of their pasts while forging their present and future. Oh, and Mina has a friend, an Eastern European Count who joins the fray.
Entertaining and often amusing, still the novel is not flawless. Goss makes clear the time needed for travel in the 19th century, especially with limited financial resources. But at 700 pages in hardcover, the story struggles not to replicate that duration; the narrative engine remains in first gear too long, straining to put the pieces in place as each character receives a share of the authorial spotlight. Catherine struggles with suspicions of others, pain from betrayal by someone she had known on Moreau’s island, the discomfort of an essentially solitary nature in the middle of masses of people and trying to understand what humans expect from each other. Even more than Catherine, Justine yearns for solitude, a return to the one hundred years she lived in isolation; though grateful for the presence and friendship of the others, travel distresses her physically and emotionally, the latter especially after meeting someone from her past. More solitary than the others, but involuntarily so, Beatrice worries she’s a liability to the group, and fears harming a new acquaintance, a man her equal intellectually and utterly fascinated by her, yet the need for intimacy, of thought if nothing else, leaves her indecisive and anxious. Diana continues rebelling against Mary’s authority, demanding to be taken seriously and treated as a equal member of the Club even when acting childishly.
Mary’s journey is a little more complex as she meets and collaborates with three women who might act as models for her future: Mina Murray, thoughtful, caring and also cleverly manipulative, a quality Mary hadn’t appreciated until seeing Mina deflect and redirect Diana; Laura Jennings, nurturing and brave, consort to and confidante of the Countess Karnstein; and Irene Norton, nee Adler, whom Dr. Watson has indicated was Holmes lost love, and whom Mary finds capable, adept at protecting herself and others, and a leader of a band of thieves composed of young women she has rescued and given purpose. Interestingly, Irene is as instinctual as Diana, but those instincts and her social skills much refined.
Once the premise is established the new characters blend into the narrative and the novel cruises along nicely as various members of the Athena Club go to Paris or Vienna, among other places. With action, the characterization meshes better with the narrative and Mina, Laura and Irene prove to be stabilizing influences, and enjoyable additions in the battle of wits against the Club’s adversaries, while their pasts with their secrets weave into the story.
As in the first novel, Goss’ prose is fluid and her sense of humor, as demonstrated in the quote above, helps move the story along while also commenting on such stories. The central characters continue to grow and their interruptions of Catherine’s narrative with asides, criticisms, corrections and observations give Goss room to emphasize the differences in their temperaments and voices. The Athena Club and associates make enjoyable companions for European travel and I’m looking forward to the next book, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, due in October of this year and concluding the trilogy.
EUROPEAN TRAVEL FOR THE MONSTROUS GENTLEWOMAN by Theodora Goss (2018; Saga Press)
ISBN: 978-1481466530
720 pages
