Frankenstein

Mary Shelley wrote a book a while ago, about a chap who created life. And now I've... not read it, but listened to it. It's a lot better than I was expecting.

This certainly isn't what I gathered from what I gathered happened in the movies. (The only decent Frankenstein movie I saw was from Mel Brooks.) This is in three volumes, and is the tale as related by Victor Frankenstein. In Vol 1, he grows up, has a family life, gets interested in science, creates a creature, goes off science, and finds one of his family murdered and another family friend sentences to death. (And yes, creating the life is really handled that casually, unlike the production in movies. We don't find out how it happens, and that's not even slightly the point of the story.)

Vol 2 is the creature's story, who has a rather unhappy life. Because he has a hideous visage, everyone, including Victor, is repulsed by him, and so he gets mad after being shunned by society. (Why he never thinks to wear a mask or hood, I have no idea.) But he demands Victor make him a companion.

And in Vol 3, Victor starts to do so, but comes to his wits. Victor is incredibly slow on the uptake, only belatedly asking questions I thought of immediately. And completely fails to see the creature's incredibly obvious plan. Leading to the final chase of man and beast.

This maintained my interest a lot more than I thought it would. There are some extremely long passages that are typical of the time (that's a way of telling Olde Englishe speak, everyone uses fifty words when two would do), but having them read at me helped me digest the text easily. Interestingly, I, Frankenstein does get some of the bits more correct than you'd think, although it still gets a lot wrong.

Definitely worth picking up.

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