Lots of "tell" not "show," but hey, it's a classic. Enjoyed the meditation on science, hubris, and the creation of life. Struggled to get through some of the narration, which was many layers deep. ( )

Gothic and romantic ( )

Not an easy read, given the verbosity of 19th century language and ideas, so don’t try to rush this seemingly short book. The critical introduction (by Maurice Hindle) in this Penguin Classic is also hefty, but worth persevering with. The backdrop to the novel’s themes is wild and romantic nature as in the description of the trek to Chamonix’s Mer de Glace (still impressive today, if one can get past the panoply of ski and tourist facilities). These dramatic features form an apt setting for discoveries and life-explorings, all rendered in a language of passion and extremes. It’s both a “mad scientist” story (the inventor going too far; referencing “Prometheus” and “Paradise Lost”) and an origin story as of a being experiencing our world from first principles (the tabula rasa concept that occurs in Locke and Rousseau’s thinking), set out in a glorious telling by the monster, a methodical but alike emotional account. All this energised sentiment and excess of “feelings wrought” recalls Goethe’s “Young Werther”, itself almost a source text for the Romantic spirit, and used as such by the Monster here who educates himself from a foundling parcel of key books. “The scenery of nature.. he loved with ardour.. The sounding cataract haunted him like a passion …” (p151). Epithets of evil are rampant in the narrative (monstrous, malignant, treacherous, wretched, malicious, hateful, hellish, hideous, daemon… to mention just a sample), flung out on sight of the “Monster” even before any actual misdemeanours have been committed, but as often for me, it’s hard to make the “baddie’s” motives or character convincing. Future film-makers of course have filled this gap. ( )

Contrary to popular belief, Frankenstein is not a book about a savage monster created by a crazed scientist who escapes to wreak havoc on unsuspecting nobodies. If anybody is the monster here, it's Victor Frankenstein himself, who has been given the power of a god to create a life, but doesn't consider the psychological flaws in the experiment. I see Frankenstein as more of a social novel than a horror novel in this respect. Shelley wants for the reader to sympathize with the Creature, not to condemn him like the cottagers do, who do so just because he's different. Frankenstein depicts the anti-Eden of new birth, a lonely soul without a companion, which is why the Creature rebels. The Creature is but a child without maturity or experience, summoned into a world which despises him, so how can we expect him to behave any differently? ( )

A classic that I finally got around to reading/listening to, although I probably saw the movie a bunch of times -- along with all the Frankenstein-inspired movies (okay, I admit it: Young Frankenstein is my favorite comedy of all times - lol). I decided to read this because I have the new book by Don Zancanella called A Storm in the Stars, which is historical fiction about the summer Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and I figured there might be references that I would understand better if I read the underlying work. I read along and listened to the Audible version that was released earlier this year. The readers were terrific. I particularly got into it when it was stormy outside, and I was all cozy in my reading chair with a cup of tea. I struggled a bit at the beginning getting pulled into the story, but I think that is more a function of the more formal patterns of speech attributed to the characters, which is probably very accurate for the time period (it was published first in 1818, and then revised in 1831). Once I was immersed, it was terrific.

I already knew that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, an eighteenth-century feminist who penned The Vindication of the Rights of Women and died shortly after giving birth to her daughter), Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Polidori were sitting around the fire by Lake Geneva on a night much like I was reading last night, rainy, and made a bet with each other who could write a scarier ghost story than the “penny dreadful” writers of the day. Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus was Mary's ghost story. ( )