Review | ‘The Daughter of Doctor Moreau’ is a ‘daring’ take on H.G. Wells’ classic by Vancouver writer Silvia Moreno-Garcia

One of the great pleasures of following the writing of Silvia Moreno-Garcia is the element of surprise; one never knows what a new novel might bring.

It’s not just a matter of genre — the Vancouver writer has published a hard-boiled noir, a gothic novel, a mythic fiction and a belle epoque fantasy, among others, in the last five years alone — but how she plays within those genres, following tropes and structures while simultaneously subverting those very conventions. Her works are unified by the quality of her prose, her care for her characters and her restless, seemingly boundless imagination.

Moreno-Garcia’s new novel, “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau” was inspired by H.G. Wells’ classic 1896 sci-fi-horror classic, “The Island of Doctor Moreau.” This isn’t simply a sequel or updating; instead, Moreno-Garcia has drawn elements from the original novel and created something wholly original, powerful and thrilling on every level.

Rather than the remote island setting of Wells’ novel, Moreno-Garcia’s reimagining is set in the late 19th century in Mexico’s remote Yucatan Peninsula, bringing issues of colonialism and slavery directly to play. The book takes place during the five decades of the Caste War of Yucatan, in which the Maya “rose against the Mexican European-descended and mixed population,” as Moreno-Garcia explains in her contextual Afterword.

Amidst this violence and chaos is the peaceful enclave of Yaxaktun, owned by Hernando Lizalde, but the home of Dr. Moreau. The doctor — in exile from his family in France, his “experiments too esoteric and wild to be understood in Paris” — lives in the walled house with his daughter Carlota, who suffers from a blood-borne condition, and his mayordomo Montgomery Laughton, an alcoholic with a dark history, alongside a community of “hybrids,” the animal-human combinations created by Moreau in his locked laboratory.

(The mayordomo’s name is something of a double inside joke: not only is Montgomery the name of the assistant in Wells’ novel, Charles Laughton played Dr. Moreau in 1932’s “Island of Lost Souls.”)

Lizalde has been funding Moreau’s research in hopes of creating a strong, compliant force of field labourers, but the results have been troubling and largely unsuccessful — the hybrids are beset with rapid aging, weakness and congenital abnormalities — and funding has begun to dry up, leaving the future of the community in peril. When Lizalde’s son, Eduardo, arrives at Yaxaktun, it seems he might be the answer to their prayers, a marriage between him and Carlota securing the future for everyone.

Not surprisingly, things do not go as hoped.

“The Daughter of Doctor Moreau” is a sublime reading experience, threaded through with philosophy, romance, history and thrills enough to keep the pages turning. The issues of colonialism and the subjugation of Indigenous peoples (in addition to using technological means to remove the human factor from economic exploitation) are pressing concerns, in the book and in contemporary culture.

Moreno-Garcia demonstrates an impressive scale of imagination and a keen, empathic focus on the nature of humanity, even of the hybrid humans, who don’t meet the standard definition. The core characters, including several of the hybrids, are well-drawn; even Lizalde, who could have been a boilerplate villain, has a richness to his depiction.

Despite its roots in a recognizable classic — though one likely better known as a cultural touchstone than as a book — “The Daughter of Doctor Moreau” is a powerfully original work, sui generis, from one of our most compelling and daring writers.

SHARE: