This Dark Endeavour

Set in early 19th-century Switzerland and subtitled ‘The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein’ Oppel’s novel looks at a crucial event in the teenage years of Mary Shelley’s hero.

Victor’s brother falls ill, and in his passionate desire to save his brother’s life, Victor is drawn into the illegal, dark and dangerous world of alchemy, in the process encountering a real life character, Polidori, who was a member of the Shelley circle, and who also wrote Gothic novels.

Victor is portrayed as passionate, whether to save his twin, or in pursuit of their cousin Elizabeth, who is the subject of both twins’ advances. Oppel paints a vivid, sometimes horrific, picture of medicine at the time, in a gripping, fast-moving and atmospheric narrative.