CANR
WORK TITLE: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S): Melez, Dora Esther; Muszbek, Dora
BIRTHDATE: 9/30/1968
WEBSITE: http://www.theodoragoss.com/
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY: Hungarian
LAST VOLUME: CA 260
https://theodoragoss.com/press/ * http://www.bu.edu/writingprogram/people/writing-program-faculty/theodora-goss/ * http://www.librarything.com/topic/35488
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in Hungary; immigrated to the United States as a child; married Kendrick Goss (a scientist); children: Ophelia.
EDUCATION:University of Virginia, B.A.; Harvard Law School. J.D.; Boston University, M.A., Ph.D., 2011.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Boston University, Boston, MA, instructor. Also worked briefly as a corporate attorney in New York, NY.
AWARDS:Nebula Award finalist, Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, for the short story “Pip and the Fairies.” World Fantasy Awards best short story prize, 2008, for “Singing of Mount Abora.”
WRITINGS
Also author of the chapbook The Rose in Twelve Petals and Other Stories. Contributor of short stories to books, including The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, The Year’s Best Fantasy, The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, Best New Fantasy, and Polyphony. Contributor of short stories and poems to periodicals, including Realms of Fantasy, Alchemy, Strange Horizons, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.
SIDELIGHTS
Hailed as a rising star of the “New Weird” genre of fantasy fiction, Theodora Goss has published numerous critically acclaimed short stories, a short story collection, and two novels. She is also the coeditor of Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing.
The book contains examples of fiction that, according to the editors, does not fit neatly within traditional categories. The works in this collection, by such writers as Mikal Trimm, Karen Jordan Allen, and Veronica Schanoes, show influences from science fiction, fairy tale and fantasy, and magic realism, but also transcends these labels. “Interfictions is a phenomenal collection,” wrote Marie Mundaca in the Hipster Book Club. “The stories are as slippery as eels, and are engrossing and provocative.”
Goss’s first collection, In the Forest of Forgetting, was welcomed as an elegantly imagined exploration of motifs from fairy tales and folk legends. Cheryl Morgan, reviewing the book in Emerald City, praised Goss’s “elegant but creepy prose that often puts a chill up the spine at the same time as you are admiring the author’s eloquence.”
The collection begins with “The Rose in Twelve Petals,” a retelling of the Sleeping Beauty story that was originally published as the title story in a chapbook. As described by SciFi.com contributor John Clute, the piece is “a superb example” of a twice-told tale. “It does everything a great Twice-Told must do, or any great story of our time,” he observed. “It takes every mode of telling it feeds from as a literal description of the case: for the only way to narrate the fissures is to believe what you say.” In an SF Site review of the chapbook, Charlene Brusso deemed “The Rose in Twelve Petals” a “chilly, expertly crafted blossom of a story.”
Critics also cited “The Rapid Advance of Sorrow,” “Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold,” and “Miss Emily Gray” as among In the Forest of Forgetting‘s more memorable pieces. Booklist contributor Ray Olson deemed the latter story an instant “classic.” Observing that Goss’s stories “celebrate a free-spirited disdain for social conventions but … more often than not end on a bittersweet, and sometimes even a sombre, note,” Strange Horizons website writer Abigail Nussbaum concluded that the “cumulative effect of her stories is the heartfelt reminder that we can do as we like so long as we remember that no one ever promised us a happy ending. Taken as a whole, perhaps the moral of In the Forest of Forgetting is a very simple one—be careful what you wish for.”
Goss explained in an interview in Science Fiction Writers of Earth that she has been drawn to fantasy literature since early childhood. She hated being made to read realistic fiction in school. “I couldn’t imagine a life so … boring [and] ugly,” she said. “I still remember … falling asleep to the sound of a train travelling through Europe and waking up in small towns, knowing that we had arrived in yet another country. I remember relatives who talked about having seen tanks rolling down the streets of Budapest, in 1956. I remember seeing Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, crumbling on the walls of a church in Milan. None of these things appeared in ‘realistic’ fiction, and yet they were real. “Fantasy,” she added, “was about adventure, and peril, and the search for beauty. That made sense to me.”
In her novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Goss presents a tale set in an alternate Victorian London. The story features the daughters of literary monster-makers, Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappacini, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, and Mary Jekyll. Sherlock Holmes also makes an appearance. All of the women are struggling to make ends meet, so Catherine writes a novel, and Mary attempts to find the fugitive Edward Hyde to collect the hefty bounty that’s been placed on his head. Mary teams up with Sherlock Holmes, but he is more interested in the serial killer who has been preying on the prostitutes in Whitechapel. Notably, the story has a unique structure, and Goss explained to a Wired Online interviewer: “The narrative itself is actually written by [the character] Catherine, who’s a writer. She’s writing this book to make money, but the other girls are in the room with her—or they come and go—as she’s writing this book, and they look over her shoulder and they comment on it.”
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter was born out of Goss’s Ph.D. dissertation, a lengthy study on the mad scientists and monsters that appear in Victorian literature. As Goss told the Wired Online interviewer, “a lot of these mad scientists, somewhere along their trajectory, create female monsters . . . And they don’t get to say a whole lot, usually. Sometimes we get little bits and pieces of their stories, but we don’t get much.” Praising Goss’s effort to amend this on the NPR Website, Jason Heller asserted: “For all its intellectual trickiness, ‘Strange Case’ is a swiftly paced, immaculately plotted mystery full of winning characters.” Heller went on to praise the novel’s “elaborate web of reality, fantasy, science fact, science fiction, literary criticism, and competing voices. At its heart, Strange Case is a lively, late-Victorian adventure that celebrates, overhauls, and pokes gentle fun at the era’s weird-fiction tradition. But it’s also a sparkling, insightful conversation with the canon from which it sprang.” Andrew Liptak, writing on the Verge website, was also impressed, and he commented: “What makes Goss’ novel exceptional is how it goes beyond the mere fascination of seeing Frankenstein spend a day with Edward Hyde. She questions the very motivations that links these characters together. Goss upends fantasy tropes to bring to life characters who would have been ignored in the period works that inspired them, and the result is a fantastic, gripping read that feels true to the spirit of the original works, but updated with a modern spin for the 21st century reader.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, June 1, 2006, Ray Olson, review of In the Forest of Forgetting, p. 50.
Library Journal, July 1, 2006, Jackie Cassada, review of In the Forest of Forgetting, p. 70.
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January-February, 2013, Charles De Lint, review of The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story.
Publishers Weekly, June 12, 2006, review of In the Forest of Forgetting, p. 36; April 17, 2017, review of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter.
ONLINE
Emerald City, http://wwww.emcit.com/ (September 19, 2017), Cheryl Morgan, “Scenes from Beyond.”
Hipster Book Club, http://www.hipsterbookclub.com/ (July 28, 2007), Marie Mundaca, review of Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing.
Interstitial Arts Foundation Website, http://interstitialarts.org/ (July 28, 2007).
National Public Radio Website, http://www.npr.org/ (September 13, 2017), Jason Heller, review of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter.
Science Fiction Writers of Earth, http://home.flash.net/~sfwoe/ (April 6, 2002), interview with Theodora Goss.
SciFi.com, http://www.scifi.com/ sfw/books/ (April 17, 2006), John Clute, review of In the Forest of Forgetting.
SF Site, http://www.sfsite.com (July 28, 2007), Charlene Brusso, review of The Rose in Twelve Petals and Other Stories.
Strange Horizons, http://www.strangehorizons.com/ (September 21, 2006), Abigail Nussbaum, review of In the Forest of Forgetting.
Theodora Goss Website, http:// www.theodoragoss.com (September 13, 2017).
Verge, https://www.theverge.com/ (September 13, 2017), Andrew Liptak, review of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter.
Wired Online, https://www.wired.com/ (September 13, 2017), author interview.*
Theodora Goss is a Hungarian American writer of fantasy short stories, poetry, and novels. Her stories have been nominated for major awards, including the 2007 Nebula Award for "Pip and the Fairies," and the 2005 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction for "The Wings of Meister Wilhelm." She won the 2004 Rhysling Award for Best Long Poem for "Octavia is Lost in the Hall of Masks." Her collection In the Forest of Forgetting was published in 2006 by Prime Books.
In 2008, her story "The Singing of Mount Abora" won the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.[1] The story was originally published in the spelling-bee inspired anthology Logorrhea.
In October 2011, she completed her Ph.D. in English with a dissertation "The Monster in the Mirror: Late Victorian Gothic and Anthropology,"[2] while teaching full-time at Boston University.
Theodora Goss's newest novel, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, was released by Saga Press (edited by Navah Wolfe) in June 2017.[3]
Contents [hide]
1 Biography
2 Works
2.1 Short fiction
3 References
4 External links
Biography[edit]
Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and immigrated to the United States as a child. She received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her J.D. from Harvard Law School. She worked briefly as a corporate attorney in New York. She is currently (2012) a lecturer at Boston University in the Arts and Sciences Writing Program.[4]
Works[edit]
(Reference)[5]
The Rose in Twelve Petals & Other Stories (2004) (Cover art by Charles Vess), Small Beer Press
Contents:
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Her Mother's Ghosts"
"What Her Mother Said" (poem)
"Chrysanthemums" (poem)
"The Ophelia Cantos" (poem)
"That Year" (poem)
"The Bear's Daughter" (poem)
"Bears" (poem)
"Helen in Sparta" (poem)
"By Tidal Pools" (poem)
"The Changeling" (poem)
In the Forest of Forgetting (2006) (Some of the 16 stories in this volume were previously published in The Rose in Twelve Petals & Other Stories),[6] Prime Books ISBN 0-8095-5691-X
Contents:
Introduction by Terri Windling
"The Rose in Twelve Petals"
"Professor Berkowitz Stands on the Threshold"
"The Rapid Advance of Sorrow"
"Lily, With Clouds"
"Miss Emily Gray"
"In the Forest of Forgetting"
"Sleeping With Bears"
"Letters from Budapest"
"The Wings of Meister Wilhelm"
"Conrad"
"A Statement in the Case"
"Death Comes for Ervina"
"The Belt"
"Phalaenopsis"
"Pip and the Fairies"
"Lessons With Miss Gray"
Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing (2007) Editor with Delia Sherman, Interstitial Arts Foundation ISBN 1931520240
Voices from Fairyland: The Fantastical Poems of Mary Coleridge, Charlotte Mew and Sylvia Townsend Warner (2008) Editor, Aqueduct Press ISBN 1933500212
The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story (2012) with Scott Mckowen, Quirk Books ISBN 159474551X
Short fiction[edit]
"Beautiful Boys". Asimov's Science Fiction. Vol. 36 no. 8. August 2012. pp. 39–43.
"The Mad Scientist's Daughter". The Mad Scientist's Guide to World Domination. Tor Books. February 19, 2013.
She has been a contributor to many publications including, Apex Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine, The Journal of Mythic Arts, Exotic Gothic, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, The Year's Best Fantasy, The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy for Teens, Best New Fantasy, Polyphony, Realms of Fantasy, Alchemy, Strange Horizons and Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet (LCRW),[4] and wrote an introduction to Mike Allen's book Disturbing Muses[7]
Her poem "Octavia Is Lost in the Hall of Masks" won the Rhysling Award [8] and she was nominated for the Locus Poll Award for "The Rose in Twelve Petals".[9]
I’m a writer of novels, short stories, essays, and poems. You can read more about me on my Press page. The Novels, Stories, Essays, and Poems pages list my publications, including some that are available to read online. The Purchase page tells you where you can buy my work. The Free page links to writing of mine that is available online for free. This page is about what’s happening now. Look below to see what I have coming out, where I will be appearing this year, and where you can find more information about me. This page also tells you how to contact me.
My Blog is updated weekly, so if you would like to know what I’m working on or thinking about, you can always check there. I hope you enjoy browsing!
Publications
I have two novels coming out from Saga Press, in 2017 and 2018. The first one, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, will be out in the summer of 2017, but it’s already available for pre-order (just click on the link). Here is the fabulous cover:
final-cover
A sequel will be out the following year. These novels are based on a novella of mine originally published on Strange Horizons, which you can read online: “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter.”
Here are some short stories, essays, and poems of mine that came out recently:
“Come See the Living Dryad,” on Tor.com, is about an unusual woman with a very unusual disease, and the great-great granddaughter who tries to find out what actually happened to her.
“Red as Blood and White as Bone,” also on Tor.com, is about a girl who believes in fairy tales, and the day one comes knocking on her door.
Tor.com Cover for Red as Blood
“The Other Thea,” in The Starlit Wood, an anthology of fairy tales from Saga Press, is about a girl who loses her shadow and has to find it again in the Other Country.
Starlit Wood
I’m not sure what to call “To Budapest, with Love,” which was also published this year, but it’s sort of a story and sort of an essay. You can find it on Uncanny Magazine.
I had two poems published recently: “Rose Child” in Uncanny Magazine and “The Bear’s Wife” in Mythic Delirium.
Projects
I’ve started a poetry blog! If you like my poetry, go to Theodora Goss: Poems and subscribe to receive poems by email as I post them. Or just go read the blog . . .
Fabulous artist and illustrator David Wyatt painted a picture called The Word Witch that is based on me. You can buy a print on Etsy, or various Word Witch items on Redbubble.
Word Witch
Appearances
In 2017, I’ll be attending the following conferences and conventions:
Boskone, February 17-19, Boston, Massachusetts
The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts, March 22-26, Orlando, Florida
Contact
I’m represented by Barry Goldblatt Literary.
If you would like to contact me directly, you can email me at tgoss@bu.edu. If you would like to send me something, you can send it to the following address:
Dr. Theodora Goss
Boston University CAS Writing Program
100 Bay State Road, 3rd Floor
Boston, MA 02215
Or, of course, you can send me a message on Facebook or Twitter. Click on the Facebook link to see my page, and click on the Twitter link to see my tweets. Feel free to friend me or follow me!
Permissions
All of the writing and images on this site that were produced by me are my intellectual property. You may repost them as long as you do not change them, you attribute them to me, and you link back to this site in your post.
It’s Time to Give Female Monsters a Voice
07.01.17
IN 2011 FANTASY author Theodora Goss received a PhD in English, which involved writing a 400-page dissertation on Victorian monsters. In the course of her research she became frustrated with a pattern she noticed over and over again, in stories ranging from Frankenstein to “Rappaccini’s Daughter” to The Island of Dr. Moreau.
“A lot of these mad scientists, somewhere along their trajectory, create female monsters,” Goss says in Episode 262 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “And they don’t get to say a whole lot, usually. Sometimes we get little bits and pieces of their stories, but we don’t get much.”
PODCAST
Audio Player
00:0000:00Use Up/Down Arrow keys to increase or decrease volume.
RSS
ITUNES
DOWNLOAD
She decided to remedy the situation by writing her own short story, “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter,” which explores the lives of female monsters such as Justine Frankenstein, Diana Hyde, and Catherine Moreau. “All these girl monsters have found each other and they’ve formed a club, and they live together in London,” Goss says. “That’s the premise.”
She recently expanded that tale into her new novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, a book that allowed her to deepen the relationships between the characters and explore their quieter moments. That’s a big change from most monster stories, in which the male heroes tend not to spend much time bonding.
“Jonathan Harker and Holmwood and Seward don’t sit around going, ‘Hey, did you see what Van Helsing was wearing the other day? Did you think that looked good on him?'” Goss says.
She hopes the book will be adapted for film or TV, where it could provide a much-needed platform for talented actresses. “There are a lot of female characters in this book, and seeing some really amazing actresses getting to be a puma woman, or a gentle, melancholy giantess, or the very proper Mrs. Poole, that would be amazing,” she says.
Listen to the complete interview with Theodora Goss in Episode 262 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Theodora Goss on the Victorian era:
“Rational Dress was a movement to, first, get rid of the corset, because the corset, which women had worn, in one form or another, for a very long time—basically most of the century—really did affect your ability to do a lot of things. I mean, a Victorian woman wearing a corset is much different from a modern woman wearing a corset, because a Victorian woman would have been wearing it from a very young age, so it would have been much more comfortable for her. The rationale for a corset at the time was not just a fashion rationale—it was thought that women’s bodies were weak and they needed support, so the corset would actually give you support, it would help you do things. Nowadays we get that support from having muscles, but actually if you’d worn a corset all your life, you wouldn’t necessarily have developed some of those muscles, the abdominal muscles that we really focus on in our Pilates classes, for example.”
Theodora Goss on Hungary:
“If you read Dracula, which is one of the novels that I wrote about in my dissertation, there’s a certain attitude toward Hungary, because of course Dracula is Hungarian. Actually Dracula is Székely, which is a tribe that settled in a certain part of Transylvania—at least this is what Bram Stoker tells us. I don’t think Vlad Dracula, the historical figure that he’s based on, I don’t think he was, but Bram Stoker tells us that Dracula is Székely. And my grandmother came from that tribe—she was Székely—so I belong to that, my family actually comes, historically, from that part of Transylvania.”
Theodora Goss on The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter:
“The narrative itself is actually written by [the character] Catherine, who’s a writer. She’s writing this book to make money, but the other girls are in the room with her—or they come and go—as she’s writing this book, and they look over her shoulder and they comment on it. So sometimes the narrative is interrupted by two of the other characters having an argument in the middle of a scene, and then Catherine says, ‘Why are you interrupting my narrative?’ So it’s almost like a novel that’s interrupted by little bits of script. And I knew I was taking a chance, because I knew that some readers would go, ‘Wow, this is annoying.’ … But I wanted to take that risk, because I thought it worked, I thought it fit. I knew some people wouldn’t like it, and in the end the kind of annoyance you might feel at being interrupted is also the annoyance that Catherine feels at being interrupted in the story that she’s writing.”
Theodora Goss on Bram Stoker:
“His short stories are really weird. I think they’re now published in a volume called Dracula’s Guest and Other Weird Stories. The first story is ‘Dracula’s Guest,’ and it’s a short story that was meant to be the first chapter of Dracula, and it actually was taken out of the book because he felt like it didn’t fit. But it’s Jonathan Harker going to Styria, and he meets a female vampire. And here’s a little funny thing—when you read Dracula, there’s one point where Jonathan Harker sees a beautiful blond female vampire, and he says, ‘She reminded me of something but I don’t remember what.’ He recognizes her because she was in that earlier chapter that was taken out of the book.”
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
Krista Hutley
113.18 (May 15, 2017): p28.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. By Theodora Goss. June 2017.416p. Saga, $24.99 (9781481466509).
Five young women in Victorian London solve a serial-murder case, uncover a secret scientific society, and form a new family in Goss' charming but overstuffed genre hybrid. The novel twist? They are daughters of classic literature's mad scientists as well as products of their unorthodox experiments. After her parents' deaths, Mary Jekyll discovers a secret fund "for the care and keeping of Hyde," but her father's criminal assistant is supposedly dead. With the help of Sherlock Holmes, she follows the money to a home for fallen women, where she finds Hyde's daughter, Diana. Mary's search for Hyde leads her next to other daughters-Beatrice Rappaccini, Catherine Moreau, and Justine Frankenstein-and the wicked Societe des Alchimistes. An awkward narrative device wherein the ladies interrupt the story with comments from a future vantage point slows down an already meandering tale, which is too invested in retelling the characters' origins instead of developing the more interesting conspiracy tying them together. Still, the clever premise and referential humor are a pleasure, especially for fans of Victorian detective stories, classic sf and horror literature, and feminist remakes.--Krista Hutley
YA RECOMMENDATIONS
* Young adult recommendations for adult, audio, and reference titles reviewed in this issue have been contributed by the Booklist staff and by reviewers Poornima Apte, Michael Cart, Charlotte Chadwick, Laura Chanoux, Courtney Eathorne, Mark Eleveld, Kristine Huntley, Jesse Karp, Alan Moores, Alexander Moran, Colleen Mondor, Melissa Norstedt, Cortney Ophoff, Mary Ellen Quinn, Michael Ruzicka, June Sawyers, and FrankTempone.
* Adult titles recommended for teens are marked with the following symbols: YA, for books of general YA interest; YA/C, for books with particular curriculum value; YA/S, for books that will appeal most to teens with a special interest in a specific subject; and YA/M, for books best suited to mature teens.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Hutley, Krista. "The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter." Booklist, 15 May 2017, p. 28. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA496084786&it=r&asid=a734034af502549735fcfb34e2a9e812. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496084786
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
264.16 (Apr. 17, 2017): p51.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
* The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
Theodora Goss. Saga, $24.99 (416p) ISBN 978-1-4814-6650-9
World Fantasy Award-winner Goss's debut novel, richly reworking a short story (published in Strange Horizons in 2010) with influences as diverse as The Castle of Otranto and Mystery Science Theater 3000, brings her gothic-inflected fantasies roaring into the steampunk era. The main narrative is a standout pastiche of late Victorian mystery fiction, set in an alternate 1880s London and featuring Sherlock Holmes and a quintet of remarkable women: Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappacini, Catherine Moreau, Justine Frankenstein, and Mary Jekyll. Mary is penniless and hoping to remedy that by claiming the bounty on the fugitive Edward Hyde. She partners with Holmes to find him--though Holmes is somewhat distracted by a killer who's targeting Whitechapel prostitutes--and in the process discovers the other "monstrous" daughters of infamous scientists. Goss easily surmounts the challenge of making such a male-defined premise belong to the women as shapers of their own destinies. A peppering of the daughters' wry comments, first presented as brief marginalia, swiftly blossoms into dialogues and alternative takes on the tale--in some cases nearly 200 pages before the commenter herself enters the plot. This is a tour de force of reclaiming the narrative, executed with impressive wit and insight. (June)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 51. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA490820797&it=r&asid=8d4574fa23a3eeedb96c5d8fa92e9ed6. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490820797
Goss, Theodora: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER
(Apr. 15, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Goss, Theodora THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER Saga/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $24.99 6, 20 ISBN: 978-1-4814-6650-9
The daughters of literature's most infamous scientists band together in Goss' (Red as Blood and White as Bone, 2016, etc.) Gothic adventure story.Goss, who has been nominated for many awards, including the Nebula, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling awards, collects characters from titans of her genre and does a little reanimation of her own. When Mary Jekyll, daughter of Dr. Henry Jekyll, finds herself orphaned and penniless, she decides to pursue a police reward for information leading to the capture of her father's former assistant, the murderer Edward Hyde. With the help of none other than Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, Mary follows the trail and soon finds herself the ringleader of a troupe of young women who have been cruelly experimented on by the likes of the doctors Rappaccini, Moreau, and Frankenstein. Giving these young ladies much-needed agency is such a ripe premise for a novel that it's frustrating to see them suffocate under Goss' decision to have them recount their stories of origin. Between an overreliance on the referenced novels, a distracting literary device in which characters comment on each other's stories, and allusions to a wider mystery, there is no room for the characters to have the independent characterizations they so richly deserve. One hopes for further installments if only to give them room to breathe. Despite a potential-laden premise that stands out from the many character-mashup stories on the market, this collection of parts fails to come alive.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Goss, Theodora: THE STRANGE CASE OF THE ALCHEMIST'S DAUGHTER." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA489268596&it=r&asid=f41239eb5c02a02861d9d827eae5b89c. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A489268596
The Thorn and the Blossom
Charles De Lint
124.1-2 (January-February 2013): p34.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2013 Spilogale, Inc.
http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/
The Thorn and the Blossom , by Theodora Goss, Quirk Books 2012, $16.95.
Ostensibly, this is a romance though not so much in the style of a Harlequin; it owes more to the original Cornish version of The Tale of the Green Knight , which permeates the text, than it does to contemporary bodice-rippers.
American student Evelyn Morgan is on holiday in Cornwall when she meets local boy Brendan Thorne. They hit it off and Brendan shows Evelyn around the little Cornish village of Clews and the surrounding countryside. Taking her to Gawan's Court, a nearby circle of standing stones, he tells her the story of the star-crossed lovers in the medieval poem The Book of the Green Knight .
It was here, legend has it, Queen Elowen and Arthur's knight Gawan defeated evil sorceress Morva and her giants. Using her magic, Elowen turned the giants to stone and Gawan cut off their heads, but the spell killed Elowen. Before she died she promised Gawan that they would be together again--not even death could end their new love.
But Morva was also in love with Gawan, and she cast her own curse that he and Elowen would not be together again for a thousand years.
Just before Evelyn leaves to return to Oxford where she's studying, she and Brendan share a romantic kiss in the woods near Clews. Evelyn has a vision that the man kissing her has turned into a Green Man made of leaves, and she runs off in a panic. It turns out that Evelyn has been suffering visions for many years and has been on and off medications to control them, but she doesn't tell Brendan that.
The two don't see each other again for more than a decade, but in the meantime they've both based their academic careers on the story of the Green Knight.
You can read Goss's novel as a straightforward narrative, but you also have the choice of accepting Evelyn's visions as real, which adds a whole satisfying mythical underpinning to the proceedings. It's lovely stuff, enhanced by a handful of illustrations by Scott McKowen that are rendered in the same style as one might find in a turn-of-the-twentieth century illustrated book.
The Thorn and the Blossom is broken into two parts, one each from Evelyn's and Brendan's perspectives. If you open the book one way you get Evelyn's story; turn it around and you get Brendan's (read Evelyn's first). This is perhaps the least effective part of the package. I don't mean the two stories--I loved getting the double perspective, and Goss has done a fine job of not being repetitive, even when detailing accounts of the same events.
It's rather, as blurbed on the cover, the "unique accordion-style binding" that I didn't care for. I found the book awkward to hold, and the whole time I was reading, I was aware that if I wasn't careful it might all come apart on me. I ended up reading it with the book on a table. I would have preferred it if the design had been like one of the old Ace doubles, but at least it comes in a handsome slipcase so you're less likely to have it spill out of your hands when you're taking it from the bookshelf.
But while you're reading it? Not so much.
de Lint, Charles
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
De Lint, Charles. "The Thorn and the Blossom." The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Jan.-Feb. 2013, p. 34+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA330006156&it=r&asid=84a3462ddba10ec1ed9a17b4a9f0cd94. Accessed 5 Sept. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A330006156
'The Alchemist's Daughter' Is No Frankenstein's Monster
June 20, 20177:00 AM ET
JASON HELLER
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter
by Theodora Goss
Hardcover, 402 pages purchase
Mary Jekyll has never been more alone. Her father, Dr. Henry Jekyll, died 14 years ago, and her mother Ernestine has just passed away after going mad. Living in London in the 1890s, she's subject to the era's discrimination against women, which she confronts while trying to get her family's affairs in order. She soon realizes she's destitute — but her mother has left her clues to a bank account that lead to a girl named Diana Hyde.
Mary remembers Diana's father from her childhood; Edward Hyde, crude and misshapen, was a friend of Dr. Jekyll's. As a mystery coalesces around them — one that transcends their curious overlapping pasts — three other women enter their orbit, each of them the daughter, literal or figurative, of a scientist belonging to a secret society: Catherine Moreau, Beatrice Rappaccini, and Justine Frankenstein.
The premise Theodora Goss lays out in her novel The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter isn't shockingly original. But before you assume it's some sort of, well, Frankenstein's creature comprising pieces of Monster High and Penny Dreadful, be assured that Goss has executed something much deeper. True, she's unabashedly drawing from the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, H. G. Wells, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Mary Shelley. Rather than executing a shallow mash-up, though, she's assembled a deceptively intricate mosaic of friendship, family, history, science, and the way literature — not to mention truth — can be manipulated.
Rather than executing a shallow mash-up ... [Goss has] assembled a deceptively intricate mosaic of friendship, family, history, science, and the way literature — not to mention truth — can be manipulated.
Mary and crew's investigation into secrets of the Société des Alchimistes, the centuries-old cabal their fathers belonged to, leads to further entanglements. The Jack the Ripper case becomes a central part of the story, as does the appearance of a detective named Sherlock Holmes and his assistant, Dr. Watson. Mary Shelley herself factors into the plot; Frankenstein is a novel that exists in Goss' twisty version of history — only no one knows it's a truthful account, or at least an account containing a certain perception of the truth. As each of the characters' haunting pasts comes to light, the book's balance between academic playfulness and poignant storytelling becomes more exquisite.
If Goss is guilty of anything, it's loving her source material too much. At points, her invented connections between all these 19th-century characters and historical figures feel too convenient. But that overt sense of contrivance is part of the story as well. The novel is presented as being written by Catherine, and the text is interrupted constantly by notes from the other women of the group, quibbling and questioning her writing style and portrayal events. At one point Catherine writes as an aside, "You, dear reader, will be able to see how annoying and nonsensical most of [these asides] are, while offering the occasional insight into character." It's a cleverly meta twist on the unreliable narrator device — the argument about who's telling the truth takes place on the page, literally between the lines of the story — and Goss is smart to acknowledge that these constant intrusions might not be every reader's cup of tea.
For all its intellectual trickiness, 'Strange Case' is a swiftly paced, immaculately plotted mystery full of winning characters you always thought you knew, as well as ones you would never have imagined.
Goss not only makes her unusual structure work, she makes it a breeze. For all its intellectual trickiness, Strange Case is a swiftly paced, immaculately plotted mystery full of winning characters you always thought you knew, as well as ones you would never have imagined. Even when she brings up weightier subjects — feminism, gender fluidity, the onset of modernity in the predawn of the 20th century — she handles them with wit and sensitivity. "It will be a new way of writing a novel, and why not?" Catherine asks rhetorically, referring to her own manuscript in progress — that is, Goss' novel itself — and its elaborate web of reality, fantasy, science fact, science fiction, literary criticism, and competing voices. At its heart, Strange Case is a lively, late-Victorian adventure that celebrates, overhauls, and pokes gentle fun at the era's weird-fiction tradition. But it's also a sparkling, insightful conversation with the canon from which it sprang.
Jason Heller is a senior writer at The A.V. Club, a Hugo Award-winning editor and author of the novel Taft 2012.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the monster mashup we need
1
Swashbuckling adventure crossed with literary criticism
by Andrew Liptak@AndrewLiptak Jul 16, 2017, 10:00am EDT
In Theodora Goss’ debut novel, the daughter of Doctor Jekyll discovers that her father was part of a secret society of mad scientists. This being a gothic fantasy novel, she naturally befriends their dangerous and beautiful creations. In a world where cinematic universes have struggled to reimagine some of literature’s classic icons, including this summer’s abysmal The Mummy, The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the monster mashup that we really need.
Goss has made a name for herself as an outstanding short fiction author and academic: she’s examined classic fantasy tropes in short stories such as Cimmeria: From the Journal of Imaginary Anthropology and Estella Saves the Village, and is a senior lecturer at Boston University, where she wrote her doctoral dissertation on 19th century Gothic literature. In the afterword of her new novel, Goss explains that the roots of the story stem from a question she posed while working toward her PhD: “Why did so many of the mad scientists in 19th century narratives create, or start creating but then destroy, female monsters?”
WHY DID THE MAD SCIENTISTS OF THE 19TH CENTURIES CREATE AND DESTROY FEMALE MONSTERS?
Goss first approached the question with her short story The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, which was originally published in Strange Horizons and has now expanded it into a full novel. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter grows from that original critical query, and in the process brings together characters inspired by the famous (and not so famous) monsters from the likes of Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Image: Saga Press
Goss introduces us to Mary Jekyll, whose well-regarded scientist father died when she was a child. While cleaning up her recently deceased mother’s affairs, she learns of an account in her name supporting someone named Hyde. With the death of her mother, her first priority is to get her household back in order, and to figure out how to pay off old debts. She enlists the services of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson to investigate, believing the person to be a notorious and brutal associate of her father’s, Edward Hyde, who is wanted for murder. Mary hopes the money from a long-offered reward would help set her house in order. Instead of the wanted criminal, she discovers that the money is supporting a feisty young woman named Diana Hyde, left in the care of a charitable organization.
Intrigued, she discovers that her late father was part of a secretive organization known as the Société des Alchimistes, whose members include scientists such as Victor Frankenstein, Doctor Moreau, Abraham Van Helsing, and Giacomo Rappaccini, all of whom seem to be working toward the goal of transforming humanity. As she searches, she meets and befriends the daughters of these male scientists, all of whom have been subjected to experiments that have transformed them. There’s Catherine “Cat” Moreau, who was a puma transformed through a series of experiments into a human; Beatrice Rappaccini, a woman who breathes poison; and Justine Frankenstein, a woman reanimated as a lover for Frankenstein’s original monster.
As this unlikely group comes together, someone is lurking around London, killing women and stealing body parts — a brain from one woman, hands from another. The women discover that these crimes are connected to the society that created many of them, and they race to try and stop the perpetrators from conducting more horrific experiments.
SWASHBUCKLING ADVENTURE CROSSED WITH LITERARY CRITICISM
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is an interesting literary mishmash, half Victorian / Gothic fantasy, and half critical examination of the monster canon. The novel is an eminently readable and brisk adventure story, but it often confronts the reader with its heavy and powerful questions and criticisms. Goss focuses on the the brutal treatment that created these female monsters, questioning why women were frequently the targets of these scientists. In all cases, Goss presents characters who were transformed as a means to propagate changes into humanity, mothers who could pass down abilities to a new generation that would inherit a rapidly changing world. Goss’ women aren’t willing to play ball, and unlike their often solitary creators (who occupy labs, remote islands, and castles), they work together to take control of their own destinies, and stop the brutal murders.
Monster mashups are plentiful: just look at graphic novels such as Hellboy or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, or even film franchises like Universal’s planned Dark Universe. Who doesn’t want to see various folklore and creatures come together for a romp? What makes Goss’ novel exceptional is how it goes beyond the mere fascination of seeing Frankenstein spend a day with Edward Hyde. She questions the very motivations that links these characters together. Goss upends fantasy tropes to bring to life characters who would have been ignored in the period works that inspired them, and the result is a fantastic, gripping read that feels true to the spirit of the original works, but updated with a modern spin for the 21st century reader.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter: Monsters, men, and monstrous men
Readers’ average rating:
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora GossThe Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss fantasy book reviewsIn The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter (2017), Theodora Goss has created something really exciting and rewarding: a novel that pays homage to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works of speculative fiction which inform every standard the modern incarnation of the genre is judged by, and yet stands on its own as a twenty-first century creation.
The epigraph — “Here be monsters” — and a subsequent recorded exchange between Mary and Catherine set the scene: The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is a collaborative effort, though by whom and for what purpose is not immediately plain. First we are introduced to Mary Jekyll, recently orphaned daughter of Dr. Jekyll and his wife Ernestine, who is reduced to extremely straitened circumstances now that she’s become the head of her household. A strange accounting book among her mother’s effects points Mary to her father’s former assistant, Edward Hyde, a sinister man who went missing some fourteen years ago and whose capture would result in a sizable reward. With the help of two well-known gentlemen operating out of 221B Baker Street, Mary discovers that Hyde left behind a daughter, Diana, a near-feral girl of fourteen.
As it happens, Mary’s mother may have known quite a bit more than she was able to express about her husband’s dealings with the notorious Mr. Hyde, and Mary discovers that a secret society of male alchemists has been at work for a long time in the attempt to transmute human women into … other things. Her keen mind and natural inquisitiveness bring her into contact with Beatrice Rappaccini, a woman whose very breath or touch can kill; the unusually agile Catherine Moreau; and Justine Frankenstein, a giantess with an exquisitely kind soul. All of these women, Mary and Diana included, are tied to the Société des Alchimistes, though the connections and resulting changes are not always immediately clear. Meanwhile, a gruesome series of murders is taking place in Whitechapel, with terrible implications for the safety of people throughout London. Can these unusual women join forces and solve these mysteries before their own lives are put in even more risk?
Literary nods in The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter don’t stop at surnames; there are plenty of locations and characters from easily-recognizable works, each of which should please readers who have any background familiarity with the source material. Goss takes the stories of authors like H.G. Wells and Nathaniel Hawthorne and expands upon the seeds of their ideas, asking the reader to consider what life as a surgically “uplifted” animal or a poisonous maiden might actually be like, rather than giving us the perspectives of the men who made or fell in love with such creations.
Additionally, instead of focusing on their victimization, Goss gives each woman her own voice and personality, as well as hobbies and interests. They each bring something vital to the investigation at hand, as well as to the novel as it’s being written, often in hilarious or revealing ways that actively inform the narrative as it’s being shaped. The majority of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter concerns bringing the group together and relaying their histories, though there’s plenty left unsaid about certain characters, leaving questions in my mind about where Goss intends to take these women and what has yet to be revealed.
Goss doesn’t slavishly attempt to re-create a late nineteenth-century novel, thank goodness. Her literary and historical influences are obvious on every page, and she does an excellent job of keeping the writing styles and conventions of the time in mind, but the story and overall tone are pleasingly modern and better suited to what today’s readers will expect. (No long-winded diatribes about the benefits of caste systems, colonialism, or castor oil to be found here.) At the same time, the characters are all fully cemented within the time period, and while there are some interjections about changes that could be made with regard to ladies’ fashion or economic opportunities, they’re appropriate for the societal unrest simmering in 1890s London.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter begins what I hope will be a long and deeply satisfying series of mysteries; if this first installment is any indication, Goss has the writing chops to keep readers interested for as long as she’s got stories to tell about these monstrous ladies and the even more monstrous men who created them. Highly recommended.The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter Hardcover – June 20, 2017 by Theodora Goss
~Jana Nyman
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora GossI’ve read several of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes works in the last few years, as well as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. In my college days (not long after the Victorian age) I also read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau. Would it be sacrilege to say that I enjoyed this delightful pastiche and tribute to Holmes and other Victorian era fantasy better than most of the originals? What The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter lacks in literary depth, it makes up for in humor and accessibility.
Mary Jekyll, daughter of Dr. Jekyll, who has been gone for many years, is facing a penniless life on her own after her mother’s death. Mary comes across some mysterious papers in her mother’s desk that lead her to believe that Mr. Hyde may still be around (she has no idea he was her father’s alter ego). The reward for Hyde’s capture for his murder of Sir Carew many years ago is very appealing, but Mary’s not certain whether that the reward is still being offered, or who she can trust with her potentially valuable information. So she decides to go to 221B Baker Street, to enlist the help of Sherlock Holmes.
One thing leads to another, and gradually we assemble a very appealing and fascinating cast of characters: Diana Hyde, a wild and irrepressible 14 year old; Beatrice Rappaccini (from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter”), with poisonous breath and a burning touch; Catherine Moreau, a woman with disturbingly cat-like qualities; and Justine Frankenstein, an extremely tall and gentle woman who was assembled to be the bride of Frankenstein ― all women who might be considered monsters by society.
These young women, with the help of Sherlock Holmes and some additional characters (it’s nice to see a servant play a substantive role in the plot), work together to solve a series of creepy murders, in which young prostitutes have been found dead with various parts of their bodies missing. To make matters worse, the murders are tied to a secretive society of scientists, the Société des Alchimistes, to which all of these women have a connection as well.
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is, on a higher level, faithful to the Victorian era and the works that inspired, but takes some intriguing (and necessary) liberties with the original stories: Mary Shelley deliberately misled her readers when she wrote that Dr. Frankenstein had destroyed his woman creation before giving it life, and Beatrice relates a different ending to “Rappachini’s Daughter.” While these women are generally well-grounded in Victorian times, we see aspects of that society that often don’t appear in literature: Beatrice supports Votes for Women and Dress Reform, Justine’s deep religious faith is counter-balanced by Catherine’s atheism, Diana has been raised by prostitutes and mistrusts men on principle, and Mary finds herself wondering how much more women could accomplish if they were permitted to wear trousers.
These women are a diverse group, each with a distinct and memorable personality and unexpected talents. Though they’ve experienced rejection and cruelty in their lives, and some of them even sexual and other types of abuse, in the process of working together they find support and friendship. They eventually name their group the Athena Club (“We claim the wisdom of Athena, but we identify with her dubious parentage”). As Jana comments, it’s refreshing to see these familiar stories through the eyes of the female characters, rather than the men who used and mistreated them.
The sometimes dark plot of The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is lightened by the humorous banter between these women, especially as ― in a rather meta feature of the book ― they continually interrupt Catherine’s writing of their story with snarky comments and arguments about how the book is being written. These side conversations do sap a little of the tension from the story, since it’s clear that all of these young women have survived the investigation and are still together, but they add a fun and creative twist to the story.
Though a part of the mystery is resolved, there are lingering questions about the the Société des Alchimistes, and another mystery raises its head in the end. Here’s hoping for many more adventures and mysteries for the Athena Club!
~Tadiana Jones