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oddfigg 's review for:
Frankissstein
by Jeanette Winterson
I’ve been compiling (well, attempting to compile) my list of my top reads from 2019 this month, and as soon as I started reading Frankissstein I was positive that Jeanette Winterson’s new book would most certainly be on that list.
This book juggles a lot: it is a genre-bending speculative masterpiece and an unusual take on storytelling, has a strong feminist lens, reimagines and reinterprets the consequences of one of the great classic horror novels, and is a thought-provoking futuristic imagining all at once.
It tells the story of a young Mary Shelley, going into her past and contemplating what might have happened in her mind around the birth of her masterpiece FRANKENSTEIN. It tells the story of Ry, a transgender doctor living in an on-the-edge-of-the-future modern world as he meets a mad scientist intent on severing death’s hold of our consciousness and a pioneer in robotics who has put everything into sexbots. It is body versus mind—what is more real? What does reality even mean in this age of the internet?
Every page filled me with questions of my own, ideas I’d never thought before, and a strong desire to re-read Frankenstein. This is a book for sci-fi enthusiasts, people who love classic gothic fiction, theoretical readers—everyone can get something from this book.
The core of the story focuses on the idea of consciousness, identity, and humanity. What does it mean to be me? Is body identity a strong enough part of the self that it is inseparable? Since we have the ability to alter our bodies gender, what does that mean for physical identity—does it make you more or less attached to the bodily form? If my thoughts and memories can be preserved and passed on to some robot or computer, would that still be me?
Winterson continues on Mary Shelley’s trail, offering new life to the fears that Shelley played upon in the early 1800s. Now, it isn’t flesh and blood monsters that scare us, it is ones and zeros—the digital takeover and potential of robots to outnumber and outsmart us until “human” doesn’t mean much at all.
This novel is intensely layered, and I think it would benefit from another read-through. I am astonished by how much Winterson managed to pack into this fairly slim book.
A must-read of 2019 and one of my top ten for the year.
This book juggles a lot: it is a genre-bending speculative masterpiece and an unusual take on storytelling, has a strong feminist lens, reimagines and reinterprets the consequences of one of the great classic horror novels, and is a thought-provoking futuristic imagining all at once.
It tells the story of a young Mary Shelley, going into her past and contemplating what might have happened in her mind around the birth of her masterpiece FRANKENSTEIN. It tells the story of Ry, a transgender doctor living in an on-the-edge-of-the-future modern world as he meets a mad scientist intent on severing death’s hold of our consciousness and a pioneer in robotics who has put everything into sexbots. It is body versus mind—what is more real? What does reality even mean in this age of the internet?
Every page filled me with questions of my own, ideas I’d never thought before, and a strong desire to re-read Frankenstein. This is a book for sci-fi enthusiasts, people who love classic gothic fiction, theoretical readers—everyone can get something from this book.
The core of the story focuses on the idea of consciousness, identity, and humanity. What does it mean to be me? Is body identity a strong enough part of the self that it is inseparable? Since we have the ability to alter our bodies gender, what does that mean for physical identity—does it make you more or less attached to the bodily form? If my thoughts and memories can be preserved and passed on to some robot or computer, would that still be me?
Winterson continues on Mary Shelley’s trail, offering new life to the fears that Shelley played upon in the early 1800s. Now, it isn’t flesh and blood monsters that scare us, it is ones and zeros—the digital takeover and potential of robots to outnumber and outsmart us until “human” doesn’t mean much at all.
This novel is intensely layered, and I think it would benefit from another read-through. I am astonished by how much Winterson managed to pack into this fairly slim book.
A must-read of 2019 and one of my top ten for the year.