The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter (The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club, #1)

by Theodora Goss

“Do you ever do as you’re told?” she said to Diana when she had made her way to the case. “No,” said Diana without turning. “Look, it’s the skeleton of Charles Byrne, the Irish Giant. Seven feet tall, he was. And there’s the brain of some kind of mathematical bloke. I’ve never seen a brain before.”

Hilary Mantel, 1998

DIANA: My favorite was Charles Byrne. I’d never seen a giant before. JUSTINE: He was not a giant, simply a very tall man. There is nothing wrong with being tall. DIANA: Says you. Of course you don’t think it’s abnormal, any more than Beatrice thinks it’s abnormal to go around poisoning people. BEATRICE: But I know perfectly well it’s abnormal, I assure you. Justine’s height is not extraordinary—for a man. For a woman, yes. But as she says, there is nothing wrong with being different. DIANA: Oh, come off it! You’re both freaks. Just like me.

Quit the assimilation normcore routine

I can guarantee nothing. Particularly not in this circumstance, when you have asked me to do the impossible with the inadequate. I’m a biologist, not a surgeon.”

Damn it, Jim

As I left that square, most of the loaf under my arm, the rest in my mouth, I looked at myself in the bakery window. I had never seen my own reflection. My father’s cottage had no mirror, and I had not passed a lake or pond or even puddle, no water still enough that I could see myself in it. I stared at myself. I looked . . . ordinary. Taller than women are, but there was nothing hideous about me. I could pass among human beings.

We're all monsters, passing