Book Review: ‘Once A Monster’ by Robert Dinsdale

Author: Robert Dinsdale
Title: Once a Monster
Release Date: 21st September 2023
Preorder: Bookshop.org*

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Summary

Once a Monster is a reimagining of the Minotaur myth, set in Victorian London. Our protagonist is Nell, an orphaned girl forced to scrounge out a living by seeking ‘treasures’ on the mudbanks of the river Thames while dreaming of becoming a dancer. One day, she comes across a man, Minos, half-drowned in the river - and from that point onwards their lives are irrevocably intertwined as they battle unforgiving London to discover who they truly are.

Mythic Context

The story of the Minotaur, the Cretan Labyrinth constructed to contain him, and the hero Theseus sent to defeat him, is one of the most well-known of the Greek myths - I think it was the first one I ever heard. It’s the first one I remember, anyway!

In Once a Monster, Dinsdale explores an interesting premise: what if Theseus only thought he killed the Minotaur - and what if the Minotaur escaped, and survived, for centuries? The Minotaur of Greek myth is transported to an almost equally legendary Victorian London filled with Dickensian characters and settings - as well as tantalising references to other Greek myths scattered throughout.

Review

Dinsdale has a truly beautiful writing style: it’s fairly heavy on the description which I know isn’t to everyone’s taste, but I think it fits perfectly with the Dickensian setting (London and the Thames are almost other characters in their own right!).

The writing is strongest when describing London and its many characters: Dinsdale transported me to cold, wet Victorian London and the muddy banks of the Thames, the squalid and cramped living conditions of Nell and her fellow ‘mudlarks’, and the contrasting opulence of the theatre Nell dreams of dancing in.

It’s a shame that the writing falls flatter in Minos’s flashbacks. I’d have loved more vivid descriptions of the characters and settings of ancient Greece - lots of opportunities to contrast between Greece and London were sadly missed.

Nell, our protagonist, is a romantic and sentimental character, naive despite the many hardships she’s suffered. She’s a dreamer, unlike the more practical and pragmatic mudlarks she spends her days and nights with, which adds a dreamy, fairytale-like quality to the novel. As a fellow dreamer, I love her optimism, the way she hasn’t allowed herself to become jaded by her mother’s death and the terrible situations that followed, the way she always believes the best of people even when faced with evidence of their cruelty.

Nell is fiercely protective of Minos from the moment she discovers him in the river. The complexity of Minos’s character, his almost split personality, and his very existence itself, is at the very heart of the story and makes for a very powerful and intriguing mystery, especially in the first part of the book. Who is Minos? Where did he come from? Can he possibly be The Minotaur? And when some of these questions are answered, the first still remains: who is he? Who does he want to be?

The mythological background is woven into the story mainly through Minos’s flashbacks: he offers us tantalising glimpses of characters like Theseus, Pasiphae, and Circe. I wish we could have had more of these!

Our main antagonist is Murdstone, a brilliant Fagin-esque villain. If Minos is morally grey, Murdstone is morally charcoal: he’s awful to the children in his care, he’s awful to his peers, he’s awful to himself. He constantly tries to justify the worst aspects of his behaviour to himself (and to us). He’s got a very compelling back story: a tale of rags to riches and back to rags again. He’s always striving to do whatever he can to get back to the top again, and is altogether a well-rounded and intriguing antagonist.

The primary theme of the story is that of humanity vs monstrousness. Throughout the novel we are given hints that Minos becomes more ‘human’ in appearance when he acts selflessly, and more ‘monstrous’ when he submits to the rage and violence that constantly simmer beneath the surface: his horns grow back; he grows taller, broader, and hairier; he begins to lose his speech and his ability to communicate - a very Ovidian transformation! I would have preferred a more nuanced del Toro-esque take - where the monster doesn’t have to change themselves to have humanity - but I think it works in this more magical-realism context.

Minos’s battle for his humanity versus his monstrosity is reflected in Murdstone. Murdstone not only goads Minos into his more monstrous behaviour but finds himself changing, too. He grows older, weaker, and more ill the more relentlessly he pursues his obsession with regaining his fortune and status - until the end, where his corpse, bloated and disfigured by the Thames, washes up almost unrecognisable by his mudlarks.

We’re given what feels almost like a bonus chapter, an epilogue of sorts, where we learn that Minos ends up surviving his trials in the labyrinthine sewers to follow Nell and her descendants around the world - I think it’s a shame that he still seems to lack independence, and still can’t find happiness for himself, on his own terms. He has fully shed the ‘monster’ aspect of his personality - along with his immortality - but it all feels a little too neat for me. I think a story so concerned with the infinite twisting turns of a labyrinth, with the constant battle between humanity and inhumanity, could have benefitted from a more open and ambiguous ending.

A digital copy of this book was given to me in exchange for an honest review.