In 1816, a group of budding writers gathered at Villa Diodati in Switzerland. What took place within the walls of that residence would lay the foundation for modern literature.

The hectic days of that “year without a summer” come alive today thanks to the mastery of Silena Santoni, who, in My Creature, retraces the crucial moments in Mary Shelley’s biography during the creation of her most beloved novel.

Retracing the Shelleys’ footsteps during their “year without a summer” cannot have been easy. What prompted you to evoke their deeds?

Two young people: Percy Shelley, a poet, and Mary Godwin, an aspiring writer. They are united by passion. Despite the fact that she is only sixteen and he has a wife, a son, and another child on the way, they run away together, defying common morals and their families’ disapproval. Constant travel becomes the hallmark of their life together, from one house to another, from one country to another. Yet they are seldom alone; with them—an assiduous and cumbersome presence from their very first elopement—is Claire, Mary’s stepsister and soon Percy’s lover.

It is for Claire that, in June 1816, they moved to Lake Geneva. In London, Claire has met Lord Byron, the famous poet; she has had a brief affair with him and has become pregnant. She wants to convince him to marry her and asks for her sister’s and brother-in-law’s help.

It is the year without a summer, when, following a volcanic eruption in the Pacific, wind-borne ashes dimmed the sunlight for months. During the long rainy evenings, Byron often hosts the Shelleys at his Villa Diodati overlooking the lake. A friendship blossoms among the young group; all are passionate about the Gothic literature then in vogue, they tell ghost stories, and they read novels set in crypts and cemeteries.

Until the host proposes a challenge: who among them will be the first to write a tale of horror? This becomes the spark that drives Mary, at just nineteen years old, to conceive Frankenstein. During that holiday, Claire does not find a husband—Byron rejects her with disdain—but an absolute masterpiece is born. My Creature retraces, with a blend of reality and much imagination, those days at Villa Diodati and the events that led Mary Shelley to create her novel, understood as the culminating moment of her thought and her life.

Your analysis of the characters is strikingly lucid. What challenges did you face in crafting Mary’s distinctive voice?

Yet the story does not end there. Byron, Shelley, and other writers and poets continue to see each other. They meet along the stages of the Grand Tour—in Venice, Pisa, and Liguria. A circle of young intellectuals, privileged by wealth, education, and social standing, addicted to opium and laudanum but even more to egocentrism, intolerant of rules and social conventions, especially marriage and marital fidelity.

Mary, as Shelley’s partner and later wife, is part of this circle. She is very young and madly in love. Percy is handsome, famous, and writes sublime verses; women fall at his feet, and she continues to be amazed that she was the chosen one. It is from this perspective that she embraces her husband’s libertarian principles, which then translate into continual infidelities. But do those lifestyle choices truly reflect her own desires? Over the course of the narrative, I imagined for her something different, perhaps closer to a contemporary female sensibility.

Each in their own way nurtured nightmares, visions, and hysterias. This is a significant observation, foreshadowing the events to come. What narrative approach did you choose in depicting the atmosphere described in the novel as “asphyxiating”?

In August 1822, the Shelleys are in San Terenzo, near Lerici. With them is another couple of friends. Mary suffers a miscarriage and nearly dies; Percy wanders through the house prey to terrible hallucinations. Soon afterward, he will drown off the Viareggio coast.

My Creature begins at the end, with the final stage of their stay in Italy, when nothing will ever be the same again. The landscape—beautiful—seems already to contain within itself the drama about to unfold. The islands of the saints and of the dead appear and disappear on the horizon. In the still afternoon air, under a sun that looms more like a threat than a promise, the carefree vacationers who, completely naked, bathe in the clear waters already bear within themselves the aching premonition that everything is destined to end.

The book balances between Mary’s biography and that of “her creature.” The writing gives form and voice to the protagonist’s torment. Which moments in Mary’s life did you find most significant and “usable” for portraying her inner demons so clearly?

In my novel I follow Mary Shelley from her birth until the age of twenty-four, when she becomes a widow. In this short span of time, she experiences things that most people would not face over an entire lifetime.

The daughter of intellectuals and the wife of a great poet, she knows her destiny is to become a writer. This is what her husband expects of her—while, in the meantime, over just seven years, he impregnates her five times. Her existence is marked by loss; at birth she becomes motherless, and she watches, one by one, the deaths of the children she brings into the world. She is consumed by guilt and feelings of inadequacy.

The many “monsters” that torment her ultimately take form in the creature brought to life by Dr. Frankenstein from assembled corpses. And by giving those monsters a face and a voice, Mary will finally be able to confront them—and overcome them.

You have accustomed readers to works that are very different from one another. May I ask what future projects you are working on?

My Creature is my fourth novel; the previous ones were entirely different in plot, era, and setting. I do not enjoy treading familiar ground; each time I seek out something new. This is why my books require a long period of incubation. At the moment, I cannot precisely define future projects, although I would like to write a family saga with entirely invented characters placed within a historical context—preferably one not widely known.