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verkisto's review
4.0
This is a modern (-ish, I suppose; this book is 26 years old, after all) retelling of Frankenstein, but with more eroticism and dread. Charlotte is a 40-year-old woman, single and desiring love, and in a moment of desperation and sadness, she creates her perfect lover, almost out of a dream. Seemingly perfect, he begins to drift away, not as one lover may lose another, but in a way that suggests she's losing control of him. In a way, though, she's really losing control of herself.
Charlotte is a cliche of sorts: She's middle-aged, frumpy, of a stocky build, and dreams about love and lovers. She's not just all that -- she has more depth than it suggests -- but her initial presentation is familiar, and a little trite. As the story grows, so does Charlotte, but it feels like the authors wanted us to feel a particular way about Charlotte, and resorted to the spinster image to do it. It feels a little cheap. She plays multiple roles throughout the book, but it's hard to shake that initial image of her.
The book is brilliantly suggestive in places, while being vulgarly explicit in others. It's an odd dichotomy, but the authors use those differing styles to elicit the right reaction from the readers. I much prefer this way of manipulating the readers' emotions than the use of cliches.
The prose is fantastic. My favorite example is the authors describing two flighty characters as "two kites on the thinnest of strings". If only I could find more of that kind of writing in my genre reading.
Charlotte is a cliche of sorts: She's middle-aged, frumpy, of a stocky build, and dreams about love and lovers. She's not just all that -- she has more depth than it suggests -- but her initial presentation is familiar, and a little trite. As the story grows, so does Charlotte, but it feels like the authors wanted us to feel a particular way about Charlotte, and resorted to the spinster image to do it. It feels a little cheap. She plays multiple roles throughout the book, but it's hard to shake that initial image of her.
The book is brilliantly suggestive in places, while being vulgarly explicit in others. It's an odd dichotomy, but the authors use those differing styles to elicit the right reaction from the readers. I much prefer this way of manipulating the readers' emotions than the use of cliches.
The prose is fantastic. My favorite example is the authors describing two flighty characters as "two kites on the thinnest of strings". If only I could find more of that kind of writing in my genre reading.
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