- Hardcover: 192 pages
- Publisher: Doubleday; First American Edition edition (4 May 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0385600534
- ISBN-13: 978-0385600538
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,439,716 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
A terrifying letter delivered by an unseen hand to John William Polidori unleashes a seminal tale of lust, literature and murder in Federico Andahazi's new novel, The Merciful Women. Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (later Shelley) and her step-sister Claire Clairmont make up the decadently inspired group assembled at the Villa Diodati in the shadow of the Alps during that famous summer of 1816 which, in Andahazi's view, "changed the course of world literature".
Byron's secretary the doctor and aspirant poet Polidori, nicknamed Pollydolly, "who bears with stoic resignation the cruellest indignities" from his contemptuous employer, accompanies the illustrious crew. Taunted and ignored by turns, this bitter and increasingly twisted sidekick to the Romantics is monstrously seduced into an opportunity for greatness and revenge by a horrendous Muse--Annette Legrand--who offers literary inspiration and genius in exchange for prosaic semen to save the lives of her insatiable sisters--the notorious Legrand twins.
In real life Polidori was indeed Byron's secretary. Described by his famous employer as "more apt to induce illnesses than to cure them" the sidelined sawbones and aspiring writer was a marginalised participant in that famous writing competition that produced Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. A few years later in 1819 Polidori gave a manuscript entitled "The Vampyre", apparently fathered on that same fateful night, to Byron's publishers. Whilst Byron indignantly denied authorship, this now classic gothic tale became an overnight runaway bestseller. The mystery of literary paternity, bastardy and possible plagiarism surrounding "The Vampyre" is the inspiration for Andahazi's fictional tale: "It is a truism to say that there is nothing as open to doubt as paternity, and yet this truth can be extended quite naturally to all literary off-spring."
This erotic roman à clef is a successful follow on to Andahazi's contentious first novel, The Anatomist, and continues his voluptuous fascination with bodily matters in a modern tale which would itself have been a worthy contender for that infamous romantic night of storytelling and ghostly invention. A witty, wicked drama about the monstrous birth of the gothic form, The Merciful Women reads at the pace of an alpine avalanche--and the twisted denouement is a cleverly uncanny ejaculation. --Rachel Holmes
Product Description
It is Switzerland, 1816. Percy Shelley and his wife Mary, and Byron's physician Dr Polidori are ensconced in the Villa Diodati. Polidori enters a Faustian pact with Annette Legrand, where she will produce a vampire tale for him. What can he, in return, offer this ghostly female predator?
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First Sentence
THE CLOUDS WERE BLACK CATHEDRALS, TALL and Gothic, about to topple at any moment on to the city of Geneva. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
THE CLOUDS WERE BLACK CATHEDRALS, TALL and Gothic, about to topple at any moment on to the city of Geneva. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
A gothic and sometimes gruesome black comedy with the emphasis on black, Federico Andahazi's The Merciful Women provides a useful sense of humour test for anyone suspecting an unwelcome strain of political correctness in a new acquaintance. The book is short and structurally elegant, using a semi-epistolatory form to recount the story of the ghastly Dr John Polidori, secretary to Byron, and his brush with a vampiress of unusual tastes. There are some nicely executed asides, including a Kafka-esque tale of a book censor which was perhaps inspired by the author's own experience: his earlier work, The Anatomist, caused great controversy in Argentina when it was publicly criticised by the sponsor of a literary prize he had won. Glints of humour and irony are frequent in the darkness, but the depictions of female sexual predation, cruelty to the deformed, and a homosexually-inclined anti-hero should be enough to bring the PC to foaming point. Thoroughly recommended.
Format:Paperback
This is short but superbly well written. Andahazi is great with subtle black humour and atmospherics - and if it's a sleight-of-hand, than it's wonderfully evocative and even thought-provoking. I'll be definitely looking for more Andahazi from now on.
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Another trek along a well worn path. This novel does succeed in being representative of the gothic genre, and does give the subject (the life and times at the Villa Diodatti with Lord Byron and his cronies) a slightly different spin. However, my main problem with this novel is that there is an underlying taste of misogyny about it - which was something I was very aware of with this writer's first novel translated into English, "The Anatomist". And, not being an exploration of misogyny itself, I am loath to read anything that contains it.
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