A Review of Tim McGregor’s Eynhallow
By Riah Hopkins
Cover description from Raw Dog Screaming Press: The illustration on the cover is a classic anatomy drawing by Nicolas Henri Jacob (1782-1871) and has been used with the permission of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
Eynhallow (from the Norse Eyin Helga, meaning “Holy Island”) is one of seventy islands making up the Orkney archipelago on the northern Scottish coast. Only 0.29 square miles in area, the small island is often surrounded by cold wind and strong tidal surges. Mystery, too, surrounds Eynhallow. In traditional folklore, ghosts and restless spirits have been said to haunt the island’s Bronze Age ruins and standing stones—the purpose of which are obscured, ranging from territorial markers to sites of druid rituals. But while these traces remain, Eynhallow’s former inhabitants did not. In 1841, the island was completely abandoned. Stranger still, right before jumping ship, the Eynhallowans destroyed their homes and curtailed the possibility of any future habitation. Today, no ferries run to Eynhallow. Visitations organized by the Orkney Heritage Society are limited to once per year. And, all in all, not much is known about the island’s shrouded history.
Enter Eynhallow by Tim McGregor (author of Wasps in the Ice Cream and Taboo in Four Colors). Not content with not knowing, McGregor’s latest novel is a speculative account about why Eynhallow’s residents abruptly left. The novel also speculates over what is continuing to keep people away. Though these questions open up tempting opportunities for the fantastical, McGregor pushes back against such reader expectation. Instead, Eynhallow’s horror is rooted in human action, in the evil that people so often do to one another.
The protagonist of the novel is Agnes Tulloch, a mother of four living on Eynhallow in 1797—some forty years before its mysterious abandonment. Interestingly enough, Agnes is not originally from the island but, rather, was dragged there as a young bride. Unusually tall, Agnes’ parents thought her impossible to marry off, so they hastily bequeathed her to a man twice her age: a drunkard and abuser Agnes formally refers to as “Mr. Tulloch.” On such a sparsely populated island, to be a non-native is to be an outsider, separate, apart from the locals who grew up there. And on Eynhallow, the locals are extremely wary of outsiders, often talking about Agnes in Eynhallow patois that she doesn’t understand. In truth, Agnes only has Katie—her sole friend and confidant—but distance remains even within this relationship, as Katie’s family life is remarkably happy whereas Agnes’ is decidedly not. Ultimately, as much as she desires escape from Eynhallow—from the island that has turned her into a kind of island herself—Agnes’ children root her to the one place she seeks freedom from. As a result, Agnes is a responsible mother but a resentful one, referring to her children as “beasts” and “savages.” Through Agnes, McGregor deftly crafts an unnerving kind of separate-ness. Throughout the novel, Agnes is constantly aware not only of the physical distance between the island and the mainland but of the distance between her and others, too.
And then the mainland comes to her, in the form of a mysterious stranger.
This part of the book is best experienced firsthand, so I’ll save my thoughts and let you experience the unexpected direction Eynhallow moves toward for yourself. However, regardless of the stranger’s impact on Agnes’ story, the foundational themes of isolation, femininity, and motherhood established in the novel’s start remain and become further developed throughout.
At first, I distrusted the reveal of the stranger’s identity as Victor Frankenstein, the mad monster maker from Mary Shelley’s classic novel. I was afraid that Victor’s arrival signaled Eynhallow’s turn from a feminist Gothic horror into yet another Frankenstein retelling. And I didn’t want to see Frankenstein and his monster overshadow Agnes and all of the character development McGregor enacts in the first third of the novel. But incredibly, Eynhallow maintains its identity and is able to center Agnes’ story without Victor Frankenstein taking over. To be sure, bits and pieces of Frankenstein are present throughout the narrative. However, the opportunities that McGregor finds for reimagining Shelley’s novel while intertwining it with Eynhallow’s abandonment are impressive. For example, readers (like myself) who have not read Frankenstein since high school may have forgotten that Victor briefly travels to “the remotest of the Orkneys” to begin laboring at a bitter task: building his monster a female companion. While reading, I found myself researching Shelley’s novel and Eynhallow’s real history simultaneously, slowly piecing together what McGregor had been stitching up with these two distinct threads the whole time, and dreading what would happen when they eventually crossed paths.
1935 teaser poster for Universal Pictures’ Bride of Frankenstein
In Shelley’s novel, Victor toils away at his task alone, unbothered by the Orkney natives. Yet, Eynhallow diverges here, as Agnes becomes Victor’s caretaker and, eventually, something of an assistant. While Agnes isn’t privy to the nature of Victor’s work, their relationship allows McGregor to illustrate their similarities, and this is where Eynhallow’s reimagining of the original source material truly shines. Particularly compelling is how both characters act and perceive themselves as creators: Agnes to four (living) children, and Victor to one necrotic monster. However, Victor struggles to accept his role as creator, and compares his offspring in a negative light to the four Tulloch children. Agnes responds, “I just think it’s sad that you have such a grim outlook on parentage. It is a wonderful thing, but it is not easy. You have to teach as well as love, and there are many times when one fails. But one still cherishes their offspring, no matter what their circumstances.” Moments like this one are a part of what makes Eynhallow’s engagement with Shelley’s text so intriguing. The reader hopes that Agnes’ advice will have an impact on Victor, that he will change, yet the reader also understands that this is a character who is bound to his bitterness, unable to love monsters as well as humans.
As a Frankenstein reimagining, Eynhallow is a clever invention in its own right. As a novel rooted in Eynhallow’s very real history, McGregor’s work is an unexpected and inspiring blend of folklore and literary canon. Readers will delight in how Eynhallow does not sacrifice its identity to Mary Shelley’s classic novel but, rather, remains centered around Agnes’ story—however grim her narrative turns out. Victor’s arrival, then, is not the focal point but how McGregor offers us a glimpse into the outside world, the means through which Agnes is finally able to think differently about the roles she’s been ascribed (daughter, wife, mother, midwife), and the catalyst for Agnes’ eventual transformation. Complicated by the fact that Agnes’ agency is repeatedly underscored by the men in her life, Victor’s arrival increases her freedom initially but also ensures her devastating isolation. So too is Agnes’ feminist reckoning underscored by the reader’s knowledge of what Victor has in store for her. Savvy readers will recall that, in Mary Shelley’s novel, Victor assembles but does not reanimate his creature’s bride. In fact, he destroys her, fearful that she may become “a thinking and reasoning animal.” In Eynhallow, Agnes transcends this silencing and remains all too aware of her circumstances—but, one must ask, at what cost? Just as Eynhallow remains surrounded on all sides, Agnes becomes a true island by the novel’s end. Throughout history, women have long been made monstrous by men. By Victor, Agnes is made monstrous as well. A more optimistic reading may be that Agnes finally gets her escape from those who have isolated her on the island. Yet, Agnes also gets no escape from the island itself. Just as Victor Frankenstein reanimates Agnes, McGregor reanimates a beloved classic. However, whereas Victor’s reanimation leaves Agnes trapped in yet another pre-ascribed role as a monstrous feminine entity, McGregor’s reanimation puts such troubling gendered violence on full display—in a work both freeing yet encapsulating.
Eynhallow is available from Raw Dog Screaming Press.
Riah Hopkins is a Rhode Island transplant to the Midwest, where she studies and teaches at the University of South Dakota. When she’s not reading or writing for Broken Antler, you can find her posting pictures of her evil bunny, Otto, @riah_0_hop.