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lee_foust 's review for:
Frankissstein
by Jeanette Winterson
While I have a huge literary crush on Jeanette Winterson, and while I loved parts of this novel, its flaws were also disturbingly apparent. First of all, from a character and plot perspective, this novel is very shallow--especially given its length. Now this doesn't necessarily bother me as I think the "Either character or plot based" dichotomy is just another false binary, much like the false gender binary that this novel partially, and a bit clumsily, also questions. I'm not 100% CIS, being an emotionally sensitive and non-physical-minded, not muscly, nor violent, nor macho male, so the trans character/narrator seemed, to me from my innocent perspective, ok. However, I see from some other reviewers here the portrayal's flaws from their perspectives and am tempted to agree. Even if I'm mostly against forcing fiction writers only to produce role-model characters, ignoring the vagaries of all of our perverse little individualities.
Also, sadly--and not Ms. Winterson's fault necessarily--the Villa Diodati thing has already been done to death in film and TV, so that kind of bored me at the start. But, like most things in this novel, once it got going, I fell into sync with it and it began to work well enough. Once the Mary Shelley character moved on from the famous Villa and scenes of the "inclement summer" of 1818 (which weather reports of the era belie apparently), she became more complex, more interesting, and thus a better read.
My most salient interpretation, and to hold up what I think is best about the novel, is that it's what we might call a thoughtful or meditative novel. It's neither Plot, character, nor even theme-based or driven. Rather it starts, I believe, with a thought or concept--the creation of Frankenstein's monster both in Mary Shelley's imagination and then on the page--and, as the human brain is wont to do, the novel's narrative free-associates to Cryonics, AI, sexbots, Christianity and all religions, gender issues, trans-gender and then trans-humanism, all topics loosely associated with the philosophical questions raised by Shelley's famous novel of a scientist/alchemist who creates a man in his dorm room. Yes, along the way the thoughts make use of cliche, shorthand, flippancy, drollery, and, yes, maybe even a bit of culture-absorbed binary prejudice, in order to illustrate its spiraling thoughts and associations. Thus its lightness and easiness in some categories in order to explore pure ideas. If you read for the ideas I think you will appreciate it very much. But, if you need a thrilling plot, believable and exemplary characters, then I think you will be a bit disappointed.
Also, sadly--and not Ms. Winterson's fault necessarily--the Villa Diodati thing has already been done to death in film and TV, so that kind of bored me at the start. But, like most things in this novel, once it got going, I fell into sync with it and it began to work well enough. Once the Mary Shelley character moved on from the famous Villa and scenes of the "inclement summer" of 1818 (which weather reports of the era belie apparently), she became more complex, more interesting, and thus a better read.
My most salient interpretation, and to hold up what I think is best about the novel, is that it's what we might call a thoughtful or meditative novel. It's neither Plot, character, nor even theme-based or driven. Rather it starts, I believe, with a thought or concept--the creation of Frankenstein's monster both in Mary Shelley's imagination and then on the page--and, as the human brain is wont to do, the novel's narrative free-associates to Cryonics, AI, sexbots, Christianity and all religions, gender issues, trans-gender and then trans-humanism, all topics loosely associated with the philosophical questions raised by Shelley's famous novel of a scientist/alchemist who creates a man in his dorm room. Yes, along the way the thoughts make use of cliche, shorthand, flippancy, drollery, and, yes, maybe even a bit of culture-absorbed binary prejudice, in order to illustrate its spiraling thoughts and associations. Thus its lightness and easiness in some categories in order to explore pure ideas. If you read for the ideas I think you will appreciate it very much. But, if you need a thrilling plot, believable and exemplary characters, then I think you will be a bit disappointed.