The Solace of Monsters

by Laurie Blauner

"Blauner never shies away from the grotesque, or the beautiful. . . . Courageous and innovative and mesmerizing, Frankenstein for a new age." — Helen Phillips,  The Beautiful Bureaucrat "A statement about the nature of evil and its inevitability, even necessity, that reveals the tragic essence of [Blauner's] vision and her adroitness with metaphor." — Jerome Gold,  The Moral Life of Soldiers "If Solace was like its protagonist—built from others' body parts—it might draw its parts from Ishiguro's  Never Let Me Go , Haddon's  The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time , and, naturally,  Frankenstein . In the end,  Solace  is its own weird and wonderful creation, the story of the fifth version of a daughter who, despite being haunted by lives she never led . . . simply wants to be herself." — Mark Brazaitis,  The Incurables Created by a grieving father, Mara F. is haunted by previous Maras. One day she escapes into the world.  The Solace of Monsters  contrasts the creation of life with its ending. How does an artificial creature discover life? What do her adventures tell us about "natural" life and our own attempts to survive—and find solace—in the world? Laurie Blauner is the author of three novels and seven books of poetry. She received a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, 4Culture, and Artist Trust grants and awards. She was a resident at Centrum in Washington State and was in the Jack Straw Writers Program in 2007. Her work has appeared in many literary journals.

200 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 3, 2016

Reviews

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 5 out of 5]

'The Solace of Monsters’ is astounding.

This short novel is about a young girl’s coming-of-age like nothing you will ever have read before, gentle reader, despite its similarity to another famous novel’s premise.

On the surface, lonely misfit Mara is by her nature one of a kind. Her full name is Mara Fifth. Father wants the best for her, concerning himself with giving her a careful upbringing (she is a full-size adult at birth). He gives her a controlled mental development as she learns more about the world through books. Her scientist Father estimates her age at being nineteen by averaging the age of the body parts he used when sewing her body together. He replaces her body bits as they fail.

Father goes to work every day, locking her inside their house with bars on all of the windows. Mara wants more. She wants to go outside. She wants to touch the world. Mara is haunted by visions from the people her body parts came from. She has strange dreams. She decides to begin a story journal, moved by something she can’t explain to write down her own short stories of fiction. She wants to create her own memories. How can this happen if all she experiences is second-hand, or told her filtered by the experiences and opinions of her Father and the memories of the previous owners of her body parts?

Mara is still learning how to function. She is very tall and very strong. When Father brings her mice, it doesn’t go well, but she learns. Next, he brings a cat. She begins to feel something warm for it - is this affection? But Father, although he means well, sees everything regarding her as an experiment, and all living things are only machine parts to him. Next, Father brings home a man, Greg, for dinner, making a point of making sure he is single. Mara is confused by making conversation and is clumsy, but Father’s friend believes her simply to be shy and inexperienced. When Father excuses himself, things go wrong. Greg finds Father’s secret laboratory and wants to help Father make more living things from dead parts. Father wants his experiments to be kept secret.

Mara realizes her Father is evil. Isn’t he? Maybe not. Is there a God? Is her Father God? Does God live somewhere? She knows what Death is, but what is Life? Greg was untroubled by life being made of dead bits, but the books she reads are full of conflicting ideas about this subject and other subjects, like her body memories, like how her Father and Greg spoke. She is desperate to get outside and see things for herself. She knows her body is an experiment, and her Father is working on the disintegration problem which may shorten her life. She is doomed to a short mayfly existence. She is the fifth Mara, and her Father has improved each one. But she craves to have experiences, feel things, discover things for herself.

She must get out of the house…

The story is deeply moving, but it also is surprisingly full of the normally cold academic flourishes so beloved by the literati. It is brilliantly constructed and full of multiple layers of meaning. I thought it awesome, poetic, lyrical. The story is loud and vibrant as a large bell ringing in a tower, as obvious as a lovesick suitor, and yet as full of hidden subterranean movements as a heart beat.

I loved Mara and this book.

[Sharman Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful novel written with care and passion. As a writer myself, sometimes I tell writing students that they shouldn’t be having more fun than their readers. But that isn’t what is happening in this lush and buoyant prose; we are really having fun together.

I could open almost any page at random and find an example. The main character Mara entreats her Dr. Frankenstein Father to help her: “I have these holes in my face and they’re all crying in your direction.”

Or: Moonlight’s scent was cool and lightweight like a melon.

Or: A red light began to spread through tree branches, a lung’s inflation behind ribs. The ground suggested muscles. Houses across the road, teeth.”

The plot of the story was less important to me than the language that propels Mara into the forest and then the city, always following the mythology of her strange doomed life. We hear echoes of many mythologies, of course, stories about monsters that we know well, delicately re-shaped.

I was particularly moved by the ending.

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a deep, pervasive sadness to this story, and it raises the question about monsters inside us--both of which remind me of Frankenstein, which it does resemble. But Mara has a unique voice, as she tries to determine a sense of self fragmented by past bodies' memories and the wishes of her creator. Her search is tragically unproductive, however, and the ending left me feeling down.

[Rob Forteath · Rating 2 out of 5]

Supposedly "Frankenstein" from the point of view of the monster, except without much in the way of plot. Mara wants to leave the house she has spent her life in, but lacks the social skills (not to mention bodily longevity) to have any sort of independent existence.

She encounters some very odd people at the edges of society, has odd interactions with them, plenty of misunderstandings. I didn't find much to take away from the story.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poignant book retells Mary Shelley's Frankenstein effectively and interestingly. The protagonist and narrator is a 21st-century female "monster" named Mara, who, like her famous counterpart, has been crafted from the body parts of other deceased individuals by her scientist/father. Like Frankenstein's monster, Mara recognizes that she's not human. As such, she experiences anxieties about not fitting in, and questions her creator about the why of her existence. But the hardships Mara faces here are uniquely contemporary; Mara's alienation results more from her interior, psychological dissatisfaction with the ways that she doesn't fit in with others (as opposed to the physical ostracization felt by Frankenstein's creature). She is also haunted by flashbacks, dreams and nightmares from those humans from whom her various body parts have been taken. Mara's telling of her pain is eloquent and haunting. I recommend this book.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you love Frankenstein's monster, you need to read this.