Frankensteinblah
Mary Shelley
Classic Literature/Fiction/Horror
*****
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"I am malicious because I am miserable. Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind? You, my creator, would tear me to pieces, and triumph; remember that, and tell me why I should pity man more than he pities me?" - Monster
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Teaser
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Few creatures of horror have seized readers' imaginations and held them for so long as the anguished monster of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story of Victor Frankenstein's terrible creation and the havoc it caused has enthralled generations of readers an inspired countless writers of horror and suspense. Considering the novel's enduring success, it is remarkable that it began merely as a whim of Lord Byron's.
"We will each write a ghost story," Byron announced to his next-door neighbors, Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley. The friends were summering on the shores of Lake Geneva in Switzerland in 1816, Shelley still unknown as a poet, Byron writing the third canto to Childe Harold. When continual rains kept them confines indoors, all agreed to Byron's proposal.
The illustrious poets failed to complete their ghost stories. But Mary Shelley rose supremely to the challenge. With Frankenstein, she succeeded admirably in the task she set for herself: to create a story that, in her own words, "would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature and awaken thrilling horror - one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beating of the heart."
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Review
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This is very possibly the best written book that I have ever read. It's definitely one of my absolute favorites. Mary Shelley does a superb job with details. You can imagine ever character perfectly, and her descriptions of the monster leave nothing to be desired. Her descriptions of nature are so exact that you can picture the scenery down to the last speck of dirt or blade of grass. She also manages to tie up every loose end. Nothing goes unexplained, and at the end of the novel you feel as though you have really witnessed this terrible atrocity. Shelley has a unique way of playing with the reader's emotions. At times you feel such incredible pity for the monster that it is nearly overwhelming. And yet still, at other times, you feel such hatred for him that you hope and pray for his demise. This novel is a very "dark romantic" styled writing. The elegant phrasing also adds to the emotional level of this piece. I loved everything about this book. I highly recommend it for advanced young readers interested in classic literature, or adults.
