Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Frankissstein

There were some good bits in this book, some of the turns of phrase were beautiful, such as the opening sentence “Reality is water soluble”, and I did like the bits with Mary Shelley, but overall, I don’t know, it was just too much (I know a crude phrase for a book review but in this case it feels accurate) too much up its own ****. But to summarise, the book jumps between Mary Shelley’s life and the present day where a young trans doctor meets Victor Stein, who has some mad scientist plans of his own.

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mispaintedlady's review

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Transphobia is why I didn’t finish the book. It was incredibly uncomfortable how the book failed to address trans people, gender fluid people and queer people in general.

It came off really dated. It progressively got worse as it was clear the gender fluid main character was having comparison drawn to AI being “gender less” and also the monster from the book Frankenstein.

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leannaaaa's review

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

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swarmofbees's review

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inceptionistbooks's review against another edition

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2.0

This one is quite frustrating. It was certainly thought provoking. The parts focused on Mary are beautifully written, some lines you could cry over, and more over with empathy.
Then we come to Ry's parts. He deserved better. Every other character, even the so-called love interest, is just blatantly transphobic. At the beginning I thought it was done to point out how stupid it makes the character look, but then it just continues? Not a moment where even if one of them apologizes for it or at least someone who opposes them. So it is quite difficult to decifer if the characters are exposing their transphobia or the author. In the best case Winterson was clueless.
While the ideas explored in this book were as I already mentioned thought provoking, the whole discussion around them was done rather clumsily imo. Of course, an author doesn't need to provide definitive answers. But if you try to tackle heavy topics like misogyny, racism and transphobia, a little more care would be appreciated.

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voodooyoudo's review

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challenging dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

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neridah's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The characters were interesting, but this didn't overall grab me

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eneko's review

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1.0

This book is transphobic. I don’t care if you are one letter in the LGBT alphabet soup, being a cis woman means you should be more careful and empathetic when writing a trans story. Unfortunately, this author has done more harm than good here. I can see perhaps maybe she wanted to include a trans narrative because we don’t get included much, but at this stage it’s better left to actually trans people. The sexual assault had no effect on the rest of the narrative or the characters and I was left asking what the actual fuck, why did you include that trauma and not deal with it? Ry was deadnamed and misgendered constantly, and it was never reiterated that is completely not ok. Even in his relationship with Victor he is being misgendered because Victor doesn’t identify as gay/queer and didn’t find Ry attractive until he saw him naked. Even Ry’s own description of his gender is strange and clearly misunderstood by the author, if we’re to believe he’s a trans man then why is he saying he’s both man and woman? Is he non binary then?
The most important thing to take away from this criticism, Jeanette Winterson, is that trans people are real people who will read your work, and know people who will read your work, the damage this book has done and could continue to do to our community is costly. Please do not use trans and other marginalised identities as literary devices. And please seek advice from multiple trans people before you pen the next one.
Clearly a talented author, incredibly well written book for the most part, but these problems I’ve outline here are too great that I can’t in good faith recommend this book to anyone.

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