The Nature of Monsters by Clare
Clark
We Are All Monsters
1666: The Great Fire of London sweeps through the streets and a heavily
pregnant woman flees the flames. A few months later she gives birth to a
child disfigured by a red birthmark.
1718: Sixteen-year-old Eliza Tally sees the gleaming dome of St. Paul’s
Cathedral rising above a rebuilt city. She arrives as an apothecary’s maid,
a position hastily arranged to shield the father of her unborn child from
scandal. But why is the apothecary so eager to welcome her when he
already has a maid, a half-wit named Mary? Why is Eliza never allowed to
look her veiled master in the face or go into the study where he pursues
his experiments? It is only on her visits to the Huguenot bookseller who
supplies her master’s scientific tomes that she realizes the nature of his

obsession. And she knows she has to act to save not just the child but
Mary and herself.
Personal Review: The Nature of Monsters by Clare Clark
Make no mistake about it, The Nature of Monsters is a very dark story
without a smidgen of joy or light. When I first picked up the book and read
the first few chapters, I supposed that "the nature of monsters" referred to
the protagonist's (Eliza Tally) employer and master, the apothecary
Grayson Black, his pinched & bitter wife, and the apprentice Edgar. Which
one of them, I wondered, was the monster, when of course they all are.
But Clare Clark's study on the nature of monsters digs much more deeply.
Is a monster the likes of Mary, the "halfwit" maidservant in the Black
household, vile-looking, snotty, and generally unpleasant to the senses? Is
it the monsters that Grayson Black believes can be formed in a pregnant
woman's womb if she is imprinted with horrifying experiences? Or,
perhaps, is it those whom seem kind and honorable, such as the
Huegeunot bookseller that Eliza comes to know as she exchanges books
between the seller and the apothecary?
The answer, of course, is all of the above and more. Thick with suspense
and horrifying revelations, The Nature of Monsters takes place in early
18th century London, complete with its own squalor, cruelty and
monstrosities -- overlooked by the magnificent dome of St. Paul's
Cathedral rising from the ruins of the Great London Fire of 1666. The
dome becomes a metaphor, a touchstone, for Eliza's wretched life with the
Blacks, first as a beacon of beauty and hope, and then as a monster itself,
indifferent to the suffering below its pious grandeur.
I loved this book :: I found it to be a compulsive read, one that I went
through quickly. I wanted to know what would happen next, no matter how
ghastly, to Eliza and Mary, and how the plot would turn when Eliza realizes
that she must save Mary and herself from the master Black. Some
reviewers found Eliza to be unlikeable as a character; I found her to be
quite opposite. For me, Eliza was real, with misfortune that she brought
upon herself, her own meanness towards Mary early in the book, to her
personal growth that transcends her own ego.
But, be warned : this novel is dark and gothic, without being graphic ... and
very much a homage to the Dickensian tradition.
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