Frankenstein's Tower

by Jean-Claude Carrière, Denese Morden (Translator)

Beginning a century or so after the events of Mary Shelley’s original novel, the series follows the savage adventures of Carrière’s monster, a razor-toothed, pulseless, yellow-eyed giant named Gouroull. Aided by a cast of venal accomplices, Gouroull embarks on a grand tour of cunning and vengeful slaughter that, over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, takes it from the frigid extremities of Ireland and Scotland to the European continent. The monster leaves behind it a trail of death, misery and madness, repeatedly turning its remorseless attention on the youth and beauty of its female victims.

In the first volume, Frankenstein’s Tower, Gouroull, dormant and stored for many decades in a glass-lidded coffin deep within the ruined, bat-infested Tower in the remote Irish coastal village of Kanderley, rises under the power of an evil spell and embarks on a terrifying rampage, in the course of which it turns its remorseless attention towards the beautiful young Helen Coostle…

Genres: Horror

168 pages, Paperback

Published November 27, 2016

About the author

Jean-Claude Carrière is a writer, playwright and screenwriter, who has also written under the pseudonym Benoît Becker.

Reviews

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carrière had a long and varied career, having written screenplays for Goddard and Buñuel as well as a series of pulp trash novels that reenvision Frankenstein's Monsters as a razor toothed ghoul that likes ripping people's throats out and kidnapping young women. For the context it's written in, it's a cool depiction of the creature. Otherwise, this is kind of just a disposable one-sitting read that won't waste your time but won't linger in your mind. Gouroulle, the creature in the novel, has a minor following gothic lit circles, with modern pulp author Frank Schildiner using him as the protagonist for a trilogy of novels where he encounters other monsters.