”Are you afraid of yourself, Mary?” Master said.The room was silent about us, but for the clock ticking, which seemed to me loud of a sudden. I thought a long time might pass before I answered but Master and I would not know it, for we was both of us waiting to hear what I would say. At first I thought I would say no, for it seemed a strange thing to be afraid of myself, but then I thought he must mean afraid of what I might do, or might say, rather than what I am and what I see in the mirror. And it was true that when I feel afraid it is what I imagine that frightens me most, which is, in a way, a fear of what is in my own head. So while Master sat looking at me I went over a great deal and at last, almost as a surprise to me, I heard myself say, “Yes.”“Yes,” Master repeated after me, seeming pleased almost. “Yes, I thought so.” Julia Roberts and John Malkovich star in the 1996 movie version directed by Stephen Frears. Read the book then watch the movie. Mary Reilly works in the house of Dr. Jekyll. She has scars on her neck and on her hands that are reminders of her father. He was a cruel man ruled by drink. The need to hurt others burned like a hot wire in his head. This position as maid working for Dr. Jekyll is by far the best circumstances she has ever found for herself. Her loyalty is unquestioning even as Jekyll adds an odious assistant named Hyde. ”The chair was turned away from me and all I could see of him was his arm and hand. The back of his hand is covered with black hair, the fingers blunt, so although, like the rest of him it is small for a man’s, still there is something brutish about it. I found I did not like to look at his hand any better than i liked to see the rest of him, yet there was something that seemed to hold me still and make me stare, as a rabbit will stare stunned by a torch light.”He mocked everything people said to him like a petulant teenager accompanied by a lurid grin or a smoldering grimace. He makes Mary’s skin crawl, but out of her concern for Jekyll, as well as the unnatural fascination she feels for Hyde, she keeps trying to figure out what the connection is between the cultured Jekyll and the malevolent Hyde. Jekyll after seeing the results of Mary’s cultivation of a small garden in the backyard realizes the darkness that surrounds his own work compared to the beauty of Mary’s cultivation. ”My work doesn’t have such pleasing results as yours. It may finally be of benefit to no one. it may only make the world more strange than it is already, and more frightening to those who haven't the courage to know the worst.”Jekyll is intrigued by Mary. There may even be a sliver of attraction. He asks her to write about her life for him. She keeps a journal, a secret journal, but she is self-conscious about showing her writing to him. The life that seems so boring to her is of endless fascination for Jekyll. He wants to understand the darkness in the people around her and if any of that darkness resides in her. He is her benefactor and so it is only natural that she starts to feel a tingle of a fairy tale. ”I stood a moment looking at his back, at his hair which is thick, silver and a little long for the fashion, curling over his collar, and I thought I would like to a lock of it. Then, shocked at my own strange whims, which it seems I never can control, I went out, closing the door quietly behind me.” A servant girl from the 1890s that fits my vision of Mary Reilly.Her growing closeness with Jekyll creates strife between her and the head butler Poole. She fears that she will be dismissed if Poole starts to believe that she is displacing him in Jekyll’s trust and affection. The fear of losing her position is beyond comprehension, a devastating thought that makes her knees weak and her breath constricted. She has to tread lightly, head down, offering reassurance to all with her obedient nature. Mary starts to put enough pieces of the puzzle that surrounds Hyde and Jekyll together, but even as she understands more of the true horror, what she will know she will be unwilling to embrace. ”I felt a great confusion, as a buzzing in my head, and I knew part of it was sadness that Master should lie to me and I to him, but I couldn't bring myself to say I had gone down in the night. So I stood holding, the tray, frozen there, and I looked at Master with all my feelings in my face. His eyes met mine, but only an instant, for the lie stood between us and he could not look at me.”We’ve all been there, in a situation with people we care about, with a big balloon of a lie filling the room around us. We know we have to accept the lie as true or we will cross a Rubicon that will forever compromise a friendship. We have to extend the luxury of belief in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. We have to give them space to reach the truth on their own. We have to wait for the weight of the lie to pull their feet back down to the ground, for the truth to sift through the rose colored glasses. Their hubris must be bruised. They must be so far down all they can see is up. Jekyll reaches that point...too late. The author Valerie Martin.Valerie Martin has written a perfect ode to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The fingerprints of Robert Louis Stevenson are in every paragraph, every revelation. This book fits so easily inside the original that it feels like the part of the book that Stevenson wrote, but for reasons beyond comprehension decided to leave out of the published work. This book is not a sequel, but a retelling of the original in true gothic style. I owe my revisit to this book to Daniel Levine who recently published Hyde. It was a clever retelling of the tale from the perspective of Mr. Hyde. All those graphic scenes that Stevenson left off screen that contributed so much to our loathing of Hyde are shown in a new light, according to Hyde in the proper light. In my youth I read many biographies of Stevenson and all of his work. I feel the need to explore those places again. I’ve always felt that Stevenson’s life is interesting enough that a feature film should be made of him. Why not the dream team of Daniel Day-Lewis and Steven Spielberg? I can dream. My scintillating review of HYDE.My illuminating review of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I realize how hard it is to write a good story. Stressing over every syllable until the mind goes numb over exhaustion. Rearranging sentences structures a seemingly amount of times. Pouring over the memory banks for the phrase that will capture the essence of the story. In the end, the writer pulls these elements together to create a style unique to them. One might assume such diligence would shield the author from criticism, but it is the exact opposite. The reader expects more terms in style when confronted with lengthy novel like Valerie Martin's Mary Reilly. The problem is, Martin does not succeed. In fact, she fails build up an area where some the greatest novels are recognized: the main character's voice. For remix of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde narrative, one might expect some uncanny events to unfold. However, there is a surprising shortage of these occurrences. The only catches glimpse of Mary trying not to get her legs chewed to fleshy bits by rats (Martin 6-7). Unfortunately, that is about as uncanny as the novel gets. The rest of novel is filled with tiresome nuances of chores and Mary's opinions on her Master. Talk about a letdown! Then again, the story could have redeemed itself if the character of Mary was actually interest. Sadly, this is not the case. Mary Reilly is just as uninteresting as her daily tasks. For example, Mary's proselytizing on the 'two masters' of ale and Jekyll makes her character appear stiff and overly didactic (23). Moreover, this dry narration style permeates the atmosphere of the novel. Page after page is filled with bland descriptions of settings and characters. Of course, being less detail-rich makes much of the text non-essential. Such an admission may cause the reader great dismay, but do not worry, you are not missing out on much. The loose sentences sandwiched between the major plots just reiterate how invisible Mary is to the rest of the world. Really, who wants to read a novel where the main character straight out tells the reader she is uncomfortable (210)? Would not it be better if Martin had just shown Mary's uneasiness? As you may have noticed in the aforementioned reference, Mary's shyness is still present even in the later stages of the story. This event highlights one the big flaws of the novel: the characters remain mostly static. Jekyll possesses the same "kind, sad" look from first appearance to final page (21). Mr. Poole is eternal guardian of the doctor. The cook is the unerring motherly figure. And obviously, Mary is the same fragile fabric lily to the novel's end. As one can see, the lack of deviation within the characters can make them fit easily into archetypes. Martin could have prevented this by making Mary the incorruptible center which the rest of the characters move and change around. Instead, Mary's no-frills narration actually hinders the development of the characters. Once again, Martin could have allowed better character development within her plain style. In fact, the fix is rather simple: let motions of Mary's chores communicate her confusion, her longing, or her fears. Then, Mary's struggle would feel engaging, and readers would want to figure out why she believes her cleaning is "not enough" (205). It is unfortunate that the author never moves beyond the surface emotions. Is this not a servant's diary? Diary's are supposed to be personal, so why did the author not add a emotional touch to Mary's tasks? Perhaps Martin was taking a more realistic view of memoirs by leaving the non-essential details, but I think the reader needs something interesting to catch their eye! After the last page turned, the reader may have many questions for Martin. Why did she not put more emphasis on the uncanny? Why is Mary's narration is dry and uninteresting? Moreover, why is she and the other character around her so static? Why did she not use representation as a way of deepening the characters? Now, these expectations are not so pressing for a short story, but for a full-length novel one might assume these questions are dealt with properly. When one thinks of a diary, a person expects to find dark and sensational confessions buried in the pages. However, Mary Reilly mimics the reality of the diary: one that has juicy tidbits mixed in with a flood of bland reflections. Sometimes, it is good to be frivolous.
Do You like book Mary Reilly (2004)?
I recently read this one back-to-back with the original "Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". I was halfway through "Jekyll" when the Boston Marathon bombings took place so until I finished the book, it carried with it for me a heavier internalization of the good/evil duality of man - especially when interviews of friends on the news played the same stories over and over about how they were "nice guys" and everyone was so surprised that they could do such a thing. "Mary Reilly" ended up being a fine follow-up companion piece to the original classic - turning the story around and looking at Dr. Jekyll from the view of an enamored housemaid. Even when she started to understand what was really going on with her boss and his strange "assistant" she stuck with him out of a misguided love - just as some family and friends are still doing with the Chechnyan bombers. As such, for me, it's an interesting look at a skewed sort of love when it's so deeply mired in hate from the rest of society.
—Peter Vicaire
A bit hampered in terms of suspense by its nature as a variation on an existing text, but a compelling book nonetheless. I re-read recently (looking forward to Martin's January release of a novel about the doomed ship Mary Celeste) and enjoyed it even more the second time around.Most powerful of Martin's novel's many strengths is its voice, which is compelling, consistent and convincing. It can be tricky to narrate a book through the "journals," which can be hard to make at once novelistically effective and convincing in terms of the character ostensibly producing them. This is even more true when the character is someone from a different time with a very limited education and diction. The tendency to sentimentalize and/or oversimplify servant figures, too, can be a problem. Martin falls into none of these traps, capturing the rhythm of Victorian speech and prose as well as her protagonist's personality perfectly.As a servant, Mary's insights about and access to not only her own employer, Dr. Jekyll, but also the entire world he represents are necessarily limited. She must spend most of her time within a confined physical space doing relatively dull and repetitive tasks. Martin uses her novelist's gifts to create a rich, vivid, and dynamic world despite this limitation. The book has the dark, enclosed feel of classic Gothic tales, yet never feels too constrained or restricted to be dramatic.The relationships of the servants, the feel of London street life of the period, even the details of funerary customs of the poor are among the elements very accurately depicted. Yet the details never announce themselves or stick out from the story, as period research can sometimes do; the author has a gift for choosing the right details to evoke an incident authentically and economically.It's the story that matters most in the end, of course, and that's both the heart of Martin's success and the source of her challenge here. Whether or not you know the Stevenson text this book re-imagines, the novel is absorbing to the end. As it closed, I wished I could linger further in Mary's life, even though the story itself felt well and authentically finished. When I closed the book I felt a sense of loss. That's the sign of a beautifully wrought fictional world, and a gift that this novel delivers. That said, the better one knows the source text, of course, the less true plot surprise Martin's novel delivers. The surprises are more subtle ones, but nonetheless satisfying.I highly recommend the novel to anyone who enjoys fiction set in the nineteenth century, likes the Victorian period, is intrigued by Stevenson's classic novel, or is just appreciative of strong and resonant stories.
—Suzanne Fox
I liked this slim novel told from the perspective of the maid in Dr. Jekyll's house. I loved the descriptions of Mary's work (for some reason I enjoy descriptions of housework -- which is funny because I certainly don't like doing it) and Mary's voice was very distinct -- I feel as if I can still hear it in my head (part of the reason I plan to avoid the movie). The period details were really interesting, especially about funerals (my only complaint historically is that at one point, Jekyll asks the servants to sit down so that he can tell them something, which seems unlikely to me). Much of the novel is very eerie -- I enjoyed the chilling parts very much.I had two main problems with the novel conceptually, though. The first is that I felt it was too short. It makes sense that it's short, since Jekyll & Hyde is, but for some reason, this novel didn't feel complete to me in the way J&H does. My second problem is that I can't see how the novel would make much sense if you hadn't read J&H. While I personally enjoyed being able to follow the references to J&H, I also feel a novel like this should be more than a companion to the original; it should be a stand-alone novel. For example, The Historian (a novel I seem repeatedly to compare to other recent novels) is enriched by having read Dracula, but it's got a full life all its own (though admittedly, the intimacy of Mary Reilly does make me feel I know her character better than those of The Historian). Anyway, The Historian) is three times longer than MR, so there you go. I just felt as though there was a lot missing from many of the conversations Mary has with Jekyll. Obviously we know what his mysterious questions mean, but her wondering about them often feels too much like she's just trying to figure him out specifically rather than having it inspire deeper thoughts in her. I mean, it does the latter too, but not to the extent I would like. However, I don't mean to bash this novel, which I truly enjoyed. The scary parts are much scarier than I would have expected knowing J&H, and the idea of a literate maid is really interesting and unlikely but not unbelievable. There's something about Martin's writing that reminds me of Margaret Atwood (who is quoted on the back of the edition of the book I have), which can never be a bad thing.
—Kristina A
