A review by illustrated_librarian
Mrs Jekyll by Emma Glass

dark emotional reflective sad fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated

5.0

Thank you to Cheerio Press for sending me a review copy of Mrs Jekyll! 

Rosy Winter is dying. As she contends her terminal diagnosis a force begins to rise within her - something dark, feminine and feverish. Refracting Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale of duality through the prism of modern womanhood, Emma Glass has returned with a tale as visceral and compelling as Rest and Be Thankful. 

This feels like more than a standard 'retelling'; it engages deeply with the original text and yet this feminine reworking brings so much more murkiness to the premise of two states that can't be reconciled within one body. In Mrs Jekyll this fracture isn't simply about violent urges that aren't compatible with polite society, it's sickness vs. glowing health, being gazed upon with desire vs. being looked at in pity, hedonistic sexuality vs. veiled repulsion, sensory pleasures vs. endless sterile grey, the very drive to live and the refusal to carry on. 

There is something so rhythmic and immediate to the way Glass writes that makes it impossible to turn away. As the mundane awfulness of work and tense dinner parties and the horrors of bodily dysfunction assail Rosy in every short, sharp chapter, a bubbling rage is building just beneath the surface. This howl of rage embodied steps out of Rosy to fulfil her darkest urges, to plunge its hands into the viscera of life and refuse to be shaken loose. Or does it? As the book progresses there's a fever dream quality to the writing that holds the reader at a slight remove, unable to be quite certain of who's in charge. 

Blistering and tragic until the last, Mrs Jekyll sinks its claws in deep. Emma Glass has written something so potent about being at war with yourself, about being pulled in all directions until you break, that I haven't been able to stop thinking about it since finished.