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scarletsherlock 's review for:

Frankissstein: A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson
2.0

TW for sexual assault and constant transphobia throughout the book

I was deeply in love with this at first, and I do think the Mary Shelley and Frankenstein parts are fantastic, and would be great on their own.

However the modern part is so intensely transphobic and offensive I cannot believe the accolades this is getting. From an absolutely random sexual assault that in no way furthers or even affects the rest of the narrative to the absolute obsession literally every other character has with Ry's genitals, the dead-naming, the gross disrespect by his own "feminist" partner (this whole thing is real TERFy, tbh), this is horrifying. I wanted to love Ry, who is gentle and interesting and fiercely intelligent, a perfect modern allegory for Mary Shelley as she's presented here (or reincarnation, or amalgamation of Mary and Shelley, or whatever he was supposed to be - same with others of the modern crew who are obviously supposed to be Claire, Byron, and Polidori right down to the names). Ry would have been an excellent character if written by an author who didn't seem to (wilfully?) misunderstand everything about his very existence. Very disappointing and upsetting.