Poor Things is a 320 page novel focusing on the life of Bella Baxter, told through third-person narratives. Baxter, living in the Victorian era, is a strong feminist and scrutinizes the way that she is viewed by men. This only makes her more unreliable however, because she is described as a standard Victorian Woman by Archibald McCandless, a health officer. In his autobiography, he gives false claims about his life with Bella, and that makes her quite angry.
What makes Poor Things different from other novels is its setup - Alasdair Gray does not take claim for writing the book - instead, he says it was written by Archibald McCandless, the public health officer. Therefore, every interpretation of Bella Baxter is somewhat skewed, and it is up to the reader to decide her true personality.
Poor Things is also a bit of a comedy novel, which unrealistic depictions of the characters and their over-the-top personalities. Alasdair Gray pretends to be the editor of Poor Things, which is a compilation of McCandless's autobiography and other texts. The novel plays in to ideas about the confusion at the time about women, who were continuously gaining more equality.
