Review: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

This review contains some spoilers but nothing that isn't common knowledge.

 

Rating: 3.5 stars

Recommended for: Science fiction scholars, fans of Emily Brontë, people trying to get into Victorian literature

With a book as well-known as Frankenstein, it’s impossible to leave your impressions at the door before you start reading.  Years of seeing the characters in movies and TV shows has given me all kinds of assumptions about this novel.  So the first thing that everyone needs to know is that Victor Frankenstein is in his early 20's for most of the book - what the what, you guys!  As a sympathetic fellow twenty-something, I give him a full pass on not having his act together.

Mary Shelley's work suffers only mildly from that famous Victorian flaw: Too Many Words (I'm looking at you, Charles Dickens).  You are going to have to sit through a couple pages of framing device before you get to Victor's story, and then Shelley will occasionally wax poetic about Swiss mountains.  The only section that I really would have trimmed is the story of the De Lacey family.  I appreciate the importance of monster's gradually education and socialization, but since those characters had no long-term payoff and disappointingly anti-climactic short-term payoff, I could have done with quite a bit less.

And that brings me to my main complaint with Shelley's writing.  She has no sense of climax.  All of the iconic moments - the monster coming to life, his first encounter with Frankenstein, the death of Elizabeth - I hardly noticed that they were happening.  So, while neither action-packed nor spine-tingling, Frankenstein is a thought provoking novel that is fairly easy to get through.  I'd say go for it.