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A review by adornhoe
The Workshop of Filthy Creation by Richard Gadz
3.0
“I have made life. From nothing. Not from an array of corpses, not by forcing dead organs back into functioning, but by assembling flesh grown in this very laboratory. The pinnacle of eight decades’ research. Every inch of skin, every bone, every muscle, every blood vessel. Built by my own hands.”
The year is 1879 and the magnum opus of Wilhelm van Frakken (a descendant of Victor Frankenstein) has just escaped: Maria, the first completely lab-grown human (or not-human) finds herself in London, among new friends and enemies, and hunted by her creator. Now, the story alternately follows von Frakken, who leaves his secluded castle for the first time in decades and is inspired by the metropolis for further uses of his researches, and Maria, who wants to stop him at all costs.
My mixed feelings about this book are largely, I feel, a result of the book having mixed feelings about itself: I constantly had the impression that it teeters between being a fast-paced adventure story with rather flat characters and a focus on action, and a work that aims to raise serious issues for discussion. I enjoy both of these types of fiction and would not even say that they are mutually exclusive, but as it is, the book felt rather insecure and “wobbly” to me.
Its strength is in the descriptive and atmospheric passages which take the readers into various parts of London as well as the titular workshop. The focus on sensory impression shines especially in the moments that appall: “A damp, chemical stench came from the pitch darkness beyond. A smell of decay, of meat and mould, of old blood and rotting bones.”
And since natural history museums are one of my favorite places both in books and the real world, the scenes set in the Museum of Natural History were wonderful treats for me.
What dampened my enjoyment mostly was a certain heavy-handed on-the-nose-ness both in content and style.
It sometimes felt like the book worked with a to-do list of themes and tropes to tick off:
A likening of laboring bodies to machines? Check!
A critique of capitalism? Check!
Beauty standards and their connections to consumerism? Check!
A non-human character as an opportunity to discuss what (doesn’t) make us human? Check!
And while all these ideas work, they are also not brought up in a way that makes this book stand out from other texts dealing with similar topics.
A lack of development and ambiguity in the characters makes their moral conundrums rather easy to ignore – there is no character where it is not clear from their first appearance where they will position themselves. The good characters are good through and through, and the bad ones, especially von Frakken, indulge in supervillain monologues that could be declared as camp if the rest of the book did more to support these vibes. The literary references are equally straightforward, and even the style does everything to make sure that the readers will never end up having to think for themselves: “Maria wrapped her arms around herself, mostly for warmth but also in an unconscious attitude of defense.” – the latter part of this sentence perfectly exemplifies what I mean by doing the interpretative work that could have been left to a reader.
All in all, The Workshop of Filthy Creation is an entertaining read that I will forget soon – for someone who has never read a neo-Victorian Gothic/horror book before, this story provides a good starting point (if said hypothetical person can stand body horror and sciency gore), but all in all it does not contribute a lot to the genre or add new ideas. I would have wished for the myriad of topics and concepts that are mentioned to be presented in a way that is both more fleshed out and has more subtlety – either that, or for the book to fully lean into its elements of surreal melodrama.
I thank the publisher for granting me an ARC via Netgalley!
~ Blog | Insta | Twitter ~
The year is 1879 and the magnum opus of Wilhelm van Frakken (a descendant of Victor Frankenstein) has just escaped: Maria, the first completely lab-grown human (or not-human) finds herself in London, among new friends and enemies, and hunted by her creator. Now, the story alternately follows von Frakken, who leaves his secluded castle for the first time in decades and is inspired by the metropolis for further uses of his researches, and Maria, who wants to stop him at all costs.
My mixed feelings about this book are largely, I feel, a result of the book having mixed feelings about itself: I constantly had the impression that it teeters between being a fast-paced adventure story with rather flat characters and a focus on action, and a work that aims to raise serious issues for discussion. I enjoy both of these types of fiction and would not even say that they are mutually exclusive, but as it is, the book felt rather insecure and “wobbly” to me.
Its strength is in the descriptive and atmospheric passages which take the readers into various parts of London as well as the titular workshop. The focus on sensory impression shines especially in the moments that appall: “A damp, chemical stench came from the pitch darkness beyond. A smell of decay, of meat and mould, of old blood and rotting bones.”
And since natural history museums are one of my favorite places both in books and the real world, the scenes set in the Museum of Natural History were wonderful treats for me.
What dampened my enjoyment mostly was a certain heavy-handed on-the-nose-ness both in content and style.
It sometimes felt like the book worked with a to-do list of themes and tropes to tick off:
A likening of laboring bodies to machines? Check!
A critique of capitalism? Check!
Beauty standards and their connections to consumerism? Check!
A non-human character as an opportunity to discuss what (doesn’t) make us human? Check!
And while all these ideas work, they are also not brought up in a way that makes this book stand out from other texts dealing with similar topics.
A lack of development and ambiguity in the characters makes their moral conundrums rather easy to ignore – there is no character where it is not clear from their first appearance where they will position themselves. The good characters are good through and through, and the bad ones, especially von Frakken, indulge in supervillain monologues that could be declared as camp if the rest of the book did more to support these vibes. The literary references are equally straightforward, and even the style does everything to make sure that the readers will never end up having to think for themselves: “Maria wrapped her arms around herself, mostly for warmth but also in an unconscious attitude of defense.” – the latter part of this sentence perfectly exemplifies what I mean by doing the interpretative work that could have been left to a reader.
All in all, The Workshop of Filthy Creation is an entertaining read that I will forget soon – for someone who has never read a neo-Victorian Gothic/horror book before, this story provides a good starting point (if said hypothetical person can stand body horror and sciency gore), but all in all it does not contribute a lot to the genre or add new ideas. I would have wished for the myriad of topics and concepts that are mentioned to be presented in a way that is both more fleshed out and has more subtlety – either that, or for the book to fully lean into its elements of surreal melodrama.
I thank the publisher for granting me an ARC via Netgalley!
~ Blog | Insta | Twitter ~