Product Description

Obsessed by creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life by electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. Mary Shelley's chilling gothic tale was conceived when she was only eighteen, living with her lover Percy Shelley near Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. It would become the world's most famous work of horror fiction, and remains a devastating exploration of the limits of human creativity.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4200 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

About the Author
Mary Shelley was born in 1797, the only daughter of writers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. In 1814 she eloped with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom she married in 1816. She is best remembered as the author of Frankenstein, but she wrote several other works, including Valperga and The Last Man. She died in 1851. Maurice Hindle studied at the universities of Keele, Durham and Essex, gaining a Ph.D. in Literature from Essex in 1989. He currently teaches at the Open University.

Customer Reviews

Not what I was expecting
Anyone who thought that Frankenstein was the tall, slow, bolt-headed monster from the films will be very surprised by this gothic/horror story.
But, hopefully, like me, you will be pleasantly surprised. The story is about a young scientist named Frankenstein who becomes interested in creating life. He attempts to make a man out of acquired body parts. The result is a large, disfigured man. This "monster" is actually a sensitive and real human being. It is only after rejection by his creator that he starts to become more of a monster figure. 'Am I to be thought the only criminal, when all human kind sinned against me? I, the miserable and the abandoned, am an abortion, to be spurned, and kicked, and trampled on.' This is the thought process that comes from rejection leads to the monstrous image. Although, I will not elaborate on this as it would spoil the story.
However, I will say that the key ideas in the book are definitely to do with how much power man should have and the problems caused by man's egotistical nature. If you do decide to read this book I am sure you will find that it is far more than a gothic tale or a horror story. It is infact more again to a heartbreaking tragedy.

Pride of Frankenstein
One problem with the classics is that their stories seep into the public consciousness like a gene memory, but with a Chinese Whispers effect, so anyone (like me) who hasn't read Oliver Twist or Gulliver's Travels or Moby Dick could tell you lots of things about them, mostly wrong. And Frankenstein is the great grandaddy of them all, one of the books which has most suffered with public perception being divorced from the reality. I for one was absolutely scandalised by the complete absence of: hunchbacked laboratory assistants called Igor; graverobbing for bodyparts; foreheads shaped like Rainier Wolfcastle; body-piercings (or -boltings); and dramatic rooftop climaxes. Although it did, in deference, have a dramatic *globetop* climax.

The bones you know: Genevan student Victor Frankenstein becomes obsessed with the natural sciences and in particular with the notion that it is possible to create (cue bolt of lightning illuminating turreted castle) LIFE ITSELF! And, er, he does so. One of the greatest surprises in the book, for me, was the way the creation of the creature is glossed over in a flowery paragraph, which doesn't even specifically mention the use of electricity, although the blurb on the back of this edition does. From this and elsewhere (the speed with which Justine's trial follows William's murder; the sudden announcement that Elizabeth and Victor are kissing cousins and have apparently been destined to marry all their lives), we gather that Shelley is less interested in authenticity than in getting the story told. And good for her (unless it's just callowness, bearing in mind that Shelley was younger here than Zadie Smith was when she wrote White Teeth): if Frankenstein were written today, it would be 700 pages long, researched to within an inch of its life and weighed down with all the wrong kind of truth. Instead it's all to do with the psychological battles between, and within, the minds of Victor and the (implausibly eloquent - there she goes again) creature. After Victor, still in the throes of creation, disowns the "daemon" in disgust at what he has done, the creature vows revenge on him and all who love him ... unless Victor will make a bride for him ... (Yes, the films didn't make that bit up.)

I have my doubts about the lessons that can be learned from Victor's agony at his own creation and even greater agony at his abandonment of it - talk about one-offs! - but I suppose it is intended as an illustration more of parents and children in their mutually antagonistic and dependent exchanges, or - more boldly - between God and man. Whichever, the greatest strength is probably its gripping plot, which really did have me gasping for more each time I set it down. I was surprised that a mouldy old classic should be so moreish - but then again, they did pay 'em by the word and print 'em by the week in those days. "Parts of this novel previously appeared in slightly different form in The New Amsterdammer": it says here.

A great gothic read
For me `Frankenstein' is the perfect mix of Realism and the Gothic, a firmly established reality but a monstrously heightened one at that. Walton is the framing device for the story both Frankenstein and his Creature relay their stories to him. He is a character to trust, a good solid man and the reader believes the versions that he tells them. But still I can't help having the terrible sinking feeling that history will repeat itself, that the horror is not over.

Shelley presents both her main characters, Frankenstein and the Creature, and asks the reader to judge. Frankenstein's obsessive desire to play god, and yet the tragedy and loss he deals with seem like retribution that has got so far out of hand. The Creature is shown as a tabula rasa, a blank slate at birth. He is not born evil but Society makes him that way. Abhorred and vilified. Yet the scenes where he kills are so graphically cold and cruel it is impossible to justify them despite his pain. Can it ever be right for the abused to become the abuser? Justified no, but explainable, of course, yes.

Shelley's fiction battles with some giant themes: Science, Religion, Nature versus Nurture. Ultimately the books does not offer up an easy answers. This book born of a nightmare Shelley had, just as the Creature is created from Frankenstein's nightmare vision to create a life at any cost. A birth that will cost him so many deaths. I urge you to read the book and decided for yourself, the questions it asks are as relevant now as when it was written, who is the monster in this story. I feel that perhaps we all have monstrousness lurking inside us. This story is a warning to us all.

Other books that offer a dark warning:
We Need To Talk About Kevin (Five Star Paperback)
The Separate Principle