Novels inspired by Greek mythology seem to have become very popular in recent years, but Robert Dinsdale’s new book, Once a Monster, is something slightly different. More reimagining than retelling, it’s set in Victorian London and owes as much to Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist as it does to Greek myth.

Ten-year-old Nell Hart is a mudlark, one of a small group of children, orphaned or otherwise neglected and vulnerable, who spend their days searching through the mud of the River Thames for ‘treasures’ – pieces of coal or iron – to give to their master, Benjamin Murdstone. It’s a difficult life for a child, but Nell has a pair of satin ballet slippers hidden inside her straw mattress, a gift left to her by her seamstress mother, and she is sustained by dreams of one day becoming a ballerina.

One morning, Nell is the first down to the river to begin another day of mudlarking and so she is the first to discover a body washed up on the shore. At first she’s unmoved by the sight – it’s not the first dead body she’s seen – but on closer inspection she discovers that this is the body of no ordinary man. Unusually tall, with enormous hands and feet, there are strange growths on each side of the head, almost like the beginnings of horns. The other mudlarks have arrived and are urging Nell to steal the man’s boots, when she makes another shocking discovery – he is still alive.

His name is Minos and as he returns to consciousness, memories slowly begin to surface of a time long ago and another life as a Minotaur in a labyrinth. But is Minos really the Minotaur of Greek myth or is he just a man after all? What will Murdstone do when he sees what Nell has found for him – and will Nell ever break free of her mudlark existence and learn to dance?

This is the first book I’ve read by Robert Dinsdale so I didn’t know what to expect, but I found it beautifully written and atmospheric. As I’ve mentioned, there’s a strong Dickens influence, from the descriptions of the poorer parts of Victorian London to the portrayal of Mr Murdstone, who is obviously inspired by Fagin, the leader of the gang of pickpockets in Oliver Twist. As the villain of the novel, he’s a very human monster and it quickly becomes clear that a central theme of the story is that every one of us can have a monster inside us as well as a hero. Dinsdale uses the myth of the Minotaur to explore and develop this theory:

“The mythographers were a cowardly lot. Just storytellers, trying to make sense of a world too complex to be distilled in mere words…But when it came to chronicling these stories for the ages, the Minotaur presented them with the thorniest of problems. To look him in the eye and see him for anything other than a base beast must have been like peering into a looking glass. They would have had to acknowledge the monstrosity in all of us.”

I found the relationship between Nell and Minos slightly disturbing; it wasn’t really a romantic relationship but it felt like more than just a platonic friendship or a father/daughter relationship and I kept forgetting that while Minos was an adult (possibly many hundreds of years old), Nell was only a ten-year-old child. The interactions and conversations between the two of them felt more what I would have expected if Nell had been a teenager or young woman rather than a little girl. Apart from that, I did think both characters were interesting; I enjoyed following Nell as she took her first steps towards becoming a ballerina and although I found Minos harder to connect with, I was intrigued by his story and by his memories of his time as the Minotaur.

My main problem with this book was the length; there were too many long and repetitive sections where the pace slowed and nothing really happened to advance the plot. I read the ebook but the print version has over 500 pages and I think that could easily have been cut down to 400 without losing anything important. Still, I did find this an interesting novel overall and would consider trying one of Robert Dinsdale’s earlier books.

Thanks to Pan Macmillan for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 43/50 for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.