Merciful Women » (Reprint)

The second novel from the best-selling Argentine author of The Anatomist, The Merciful Women is a brilliant retelling of the birth of the Gothic novel. In the summer of 1816, Percy and Mary Shelley, Mary's sister, and Lord Byron hid themselves away in a Swiss villa, whiling away rainy afternoons with the Gothic novel contest that would produce Frankenstein. Andahazi's reimagining focuses on the fifth competitor: John Polidori, Byron's manservant, a talentless hack resentful of the ease of his master's life. Through a Faustian pact with an unseen intercessant, Polidori obtains the most compelling vampire story ever written. But "The Vampyre" has striking similarities to Polidori's benefactor and to what she asks of him in return. Opium, erotica, and decadence meld into a sly and stylish novel about literary ambition, talent, and inspiration. "A hoot ... a Voltaire-like skewering of the myth of genius. Andahazi can remind you of vintage Terry Southern." -- Richard Wallace, The Seattle Times "Playful, satiric, erotic, sometimes savage, sometimes slapstick ... something completely different, and well worth reading. -- San Francisco Chronicle "As a piece of mock-scholarly, wickedly ironic entertainment, it is an utter delight." -- Publishers Weekly "This literary tour de force cum vampire tale will leave the reader gasping-from laughter and horror by turns." -- The Baltimore Sun

Publishers Weekly

Argentine writer Andahazi (The Anatomist) fictionalizes, tongue in cheek, the legendary beginnings of the gothic novel in this slender, winningly erudite volume. In the Swiss Alps, where Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley, Mary's stepsister and Lord Byron live in the summer of 1816, the writers contend with the ambitions of John Polidori, Byron's gloomy secretary, who winds up shocking everyone with the first masterful gothic tale, The Vampyre, but only because he's struck a Faustian deal with a devilish woman. Arch, but never smug or precious, Andahazi's tale centers on the disgruntled Polidori, a brooding, self- important scrap of a man who feels "a delicious pleasure in self-pity," and whose foul mood only improves when he receives a strange series of missives, penned by an enigmatic pariah who refers to herself as Annette Legrand. Readers swiftly learn that Annette is a hideously misshapen but preternaturally intelligent freak of nature, formed from the membranous excrescence that linked her two sisters, Colette and Babette, in utero. Vampirishly dependent upon "the essential fluid that only... men possess," Annette has heretofore relied upon her gorgeous sisters' seductions to provide her with sustenance. Now desperate for the "elixir" that her aging siblings can no longer easily obtain, Annette suggests a bizarre arrangement to the ambitious, fame-seeking Polidori: if he provides her with his seed, she will provide him with an unpublished manuscript of rare depth and inventiveness, which he can pass off as his own creation. Written entirely in a cleverly modulated mock-Gothic style, encompassing references from Edgar Allan Poe's The Gold-Bug to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Andahazi's well-researched tale succeeds as an elegant, clever deconstruction of authorship, imagination and the writing process. This is a short, tricky novel, peopled almost exclusively by broadly limned caricatures and with a plot hinging on a few well-placed double-crosses. As a piece of mock-scholarly, wickedly ironic entertainment, it is an utter delight. (Oct.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.