Mary Reilly
by Valerie Martin
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Book Summary Information
Author: Valerie MartinEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2001-04-10
ISBN: 0375725997
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Mary Reilly
Book Review: A Brilliant, Enduring Novel of Stunning Imagination
Summary: 5 Stars
Valerie Martin may be one of the two or three most accomplished writers of fiction of our time. She may also be the most misunderstood. It's rare that I take exception to other reviews here, but the most recent ones posted about Mary Reilly are so sadly misinformed, they need addressing. To begin with, to the reader who wasn't sure, the book is a NOVEL, not a history. It is a fictional take on another NOVEL, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. To the reader who was confused by the movie: the movie was so egregiously awful I tell everyone never to see it. It helps to have read Stevenson's novel, but not necessary at all. Mary Reilly was out of print for some years, a publishing sin, and it's right and proper it's been returned to the public. The novel is, simply put, perfectly constructed. Read it once for the powerful story of a doomed domestic and her equally doomed employer, then read it again for the poetic spareness and emotional wallop of the language. The opening chapter, a letter Mary writes to Dr. Jekyll about her subjection to one of the most catastrophic cases of child abuse you could imagine, sets up the framework for the novel. Mary's father nearly ruined her because she broke a cup. Much later, Mr. Hyde nearly rapes her--as he's breaking a cup. The duality of the images throughout the book mirrors the duality of Dr. Jekyll's spirit, as well as dualities in life and philosophy multiplying in the Jekyll household. The gardening episodes which so bored one reader are a subtle symbol of the creation theme: so much work to create, so little time to destroy. They also mark the difference between Mary and Jekyll. She creates good, he creates evil, although unwittingly.
The plot follows two lines: the unuttered romantic love between Mary and Dr. Jekyll, and the comparison of Hyde, not to Jekyll, but to Mary's father. It's a brilliant device, and works itself out in ever more elegant ways. Mary, the rare Victorian domestic who is literate, seeks in Dr. Jekyll the emotional response of a father and a lover. Dr. Jekyll, in turn, seeks from Mary the emotional and intellectual response of a lover/wife and a best friend. You want it to work for them. Oh, you do so desperately want it to. But you know the ending for Dr. Jekyll, and it remains for Valerie Martin's incredible imagination to weave in Mary's hopeless end according to Stevenson's original plot. I taught this book in the classroom for years, and of the hundreds of students who read it, NOT ONE ever disliked it.
Approach Mary Reilly as an unfolding map of literary treasure and you will find more gold than most works of fiction can even hint it. Five stars aren't enough for a horror novel which is a romantic novel which is a suspense novel which is an historical novel. Mary Reilly is unlike anything else you will ever read. I thank Valerie Martin every time I pick up this book for giving us so great a literary gift.
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