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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
First read 06/2025 for Farnham book club
A neatly put together book, which I didn't quite fall in love with even though it plays around with its framing in a way I always enjoy. What I found most interesting were myriad little moments with thematic significance, which a book review isn't particularly well suited to discussing without adding scores of examples, which I can't be bothered to do. Really the ideal format for discussion is an annotated copy to be passed around between friends. Alas.
Alasdair Gray presents himself as the editor of a historic work that he's acquired and intends to publish, and is brave enough to do so in a not entirely flattering light, so I shall use apostrophes when discussing the character 'Alasdair Gray', so as not to make unkind comments about an author who seems to have known what he was doing.
The bulk of the book is therefore the Frankenstein-esque memoir of Archibald McCandless. This is bookended at one end by 'Gray's' introduction, explaining how he acquired the work and verified its authenticity, and at the other end by a letter from Victoria McCandless to her descendants, in which she refutes much of Archibald's work. In the middle, two letters are reproduced (as read by Godwin Baxter, set down by Archibald, then edited by 'Gray'); the first recounts some events and the second, by Victoria, offers a counter-narrative. Evidently there's a lot going on to do with truth, and it's elegantly done. I like this sort of thing very much. As is often the case with these things, I think an interest in the 'real' would be taking an analysis in the wrong direction; what matters is the conflict between the different accounts.
The original artwork is supposedly done by William Strang, but has more in common with Gray's other work. I'll give it a pass, though, since the book is playfully conscious of its fictitiousness: a page of reviews at the front, upon close examination, damns the book more than it praises it, and some of the newspapers that supposedly provided these quotes don't exist. (In addition to this and Gray's depiction of himself, Victoria McCandless acknowledges the similarity to such Gothic works as The Coming Race, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Dracula.) For endpapers, Archibald McCandless' memoir has a design of a nude woman lying in the jaws of a skull (based on one of Strang's works), which ties in neatly with the idea of a woman being born from death, and resonates wonderfully with Godwin Baxter's scream at the end of chapter seven. Godwin Baxter, in Archibald's narrative, is both Creature and Creator (Bella/Victoria calls him "God", which is fantastically on the nose, but can be forgiven in light of the Victoria section), and sets out to make a wife who will both desire and need him. His aetiology locates this want in his lack of a singular mother figure during childhood (which can be connected to Victoria's A Loving Economy); when his purpose-built wife Bella decides to marry Archibald instead of him, his scream causes his "monstrous" unbroken voice to crack into a normal baritone. It's not difficult to connect this symbolically to a coming of age, as his fantasy breaks and he must accept that, having created a living being, she will make her own decisions.
Thus Archibald's narrative can be seen as a continuation of Universal's 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein makes for his monster the bride he was denied in Shelley's book. The Universal bride, in her brief appearance, communicates not with words but sounds—the film does not allow her a voice (as it is conventionally understood). Poor Things can be read in this light as a book about the de-voicing of Victoria McCandless, not just by Archibald McCandless' narrative but also by the editorial decision of 'Alasdair Gray' to defer Victoria's revelatory letter to the end of the book. Her decision to inoculate readers of Archibald's memoir against—what were, to her—falsehoods, has not been respected, and her agency denied. And to think 'Gray' praised (the fictional version of) Hugh MacDiarmid for preserving in full one of Victoria's letters despite objecting to some of the contents!
I haven't seen the 2023 film adaptation, but Wikipedia suggests it does away with the 'Gray'/Victoria framing, so I'm not surprised to learn that at least a few critics took issue with the supposedly feminist aspects. Incidentally, the cover of my edition is based on the film, and I don't like it at all. I don't know what famous people look like, so Emma Stone's face tells me nothing, and those cosmetics look distinctly 21st Century—it doesn't at all suggest neo-Victorian.
A neatly put together book, which I didn't quite fall in love with even though it plays around with its framing in a way I always enjoy. What I found most interesting were myriad little moments with thematic significance, which a book review isn't particularly well suited to discussing without adding scores of examples, which I can't be bothered to do. Really the ideal format for discussion is an annotated copy to be passed around between friends. Alas.
Alasdair Gray presents himself as the editor of a historic work that he's acquired and intends to publish, and is brave enough to do so in a not entirely flattering light, so I shall use apostrophes when discussing the character 'Alasdair Gray', so as not to make unkind comments about an author who seems to have known what he was doing.
The bulk of the book is therefore the Frankenstein-esque memoir of Archibald McCandless. This is bookended at one end by 'Gray's' introduction, explaining how he acquired the work and verified its authenticity, and at the other end by a letter from Victoria McCandless to her descendants, in which she refutes much of Archibald's work. In the middle, two letters are reproduced (as read by Godwin Baxter, set down by Archibald, then edited by 'Gray'); the first recounts some events and the second, by Victoria, offers a counter-narrative. Evidently there's a lot going on to do with truth, and it's elegantly done. I like this sort of thing very much. As is often the case with these things, I think an interest in the 'real' would be taking an analysis in the wrong direction; what matters is the conflict between the different accounts.
The original artwork is supposedly done by William Strang, but has more in common with Gray's other work. I'll give it a pass, though, since the book is playfully conscious of its fictitiousness: a page of reviews at the front, upon close examination, damns the book more than it praises it, and some of the newspapers that supposedly provided these quotes don't exist. (In addition to this and Gray's depiction of himself, Victoria McCandless acknowledges the similarity to such Gothic works as The Coming Race, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Dracula.) For endpapers, Archibald McCandless' memoir has a design of a nude woman lying in the jaws of a skull (based on one of Strang's works), which ties in neatly with the idea of a woman being born from death, and resonates wonderfully with Godwin Baxter's scream at the end of chapter seven. Godwin Baxter, in Archibald's narrative, is both Creature and Creator (Bella/Victoria calls him "God", which is fantastically on the nose, but can be forgiven in light of the Victoria section), and sets out to make a wife who will both desire and need him. His aetiology locates this want in his lack of a singular mother figure during childhood (which can be connected to Victoria's A Loving Economy); when his purpose-built wife Bella decides to marry Archibald instead of him, his scream causes his "monstrous" unbroken voice to crack into a normal baritone. It's not difficult to connect this symbolically to a coming of age, as his fantasy breaks and he must accept that, having created a living being, she will make her own decisions.
Thus Archibald's narrative can be seen as a continuation of Universal's 1935 Bride of Frankenstein, in which Frankenstein makes for his monster the bride he was denied in Shelley's book. The Universal bride, in her brief appearance, communicates not with words but sounds—the film does not allow her a voice (as it is conventionally understood). Poor Things can be read in this light as a book about the de-voicing of Victoria McCandless, not just by Archibald McCandless' narrative but also by the editorial decision of 'Alasdair Gray' to defer Victoria's revelatory letter to the end of the book. Her decision to inoculate readers of Archibald's memoir against—what were, to her—falsehoods, has not been respected, and her agency denied. And to think 'Gray' praised (the fictional version of) Hugh MacDiarmid for preserving in full one of Victoria's letters despite objecting to some of the contents!
I haven't seen the 2023 film adaptation, but Wikipedia suggests it does away with the 'Gray'/Victoria framing, so I'm not surprised to learn that at least a few critics took issue with the supposedly feminist aspects. Incidentally, the cover of my edition is based on the film, and I don't like it at all. I don't know what famous people look like, so Emma Stone's face tells me nothing, and those cosmetics look distinctly 21st Century—it doesn't at all suggest neo-Victorian.
This was such an interesting book. The characters, the plot and the conclusion. A feminist tale with a Frankenstein twist. Chauvinist men who try to create a perfect woman for themselves that backfires when she makes her own decisions and does what she wants. I really liked the characters in this book.
adventurous
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
funny
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
funny
fast-paced
remarkable what Gray does in this that Lanthimos is incapable of
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes