Frankenstein in Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge

May 30, 2015 Jennifer rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, owned, sf, gothic, polar-fiction, read-aloud

Re-read this year as a family bedtime story. A bit dry for the kids in places, but held up fairly well.

Review from an earlier read: Sandy bought an extra copy of this for their Sci-fi Literature course by accident, and I'd been feeling nostalgic for my Gothic Literature college course (plus, I needed a book for the "Book from the 1800s for book bingo), so I snatched this up when they offered it on Books, Beer, and Pizza night.

All I'd forgotten since the last reading! Entirely forgotten was the f ...more

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Jan 06, 2015 Sarah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: book-club-books

Loved this book in high school, but found it somewhat less enjoyable this time. Dr. Frankenstein has like 80 feverish episodes, which really slows down the narrative, and it was hard to suspend belief regarding the lack of science. Still, a must read for everyone, and if you have children aged 8+, get them the Great Illustrated Classic of this.

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Nov 13, 2016 Jessica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: serial-reader-app

I read Frankenstein in daily installments on the Serial Reader app because one of the Book Riot Read Harder challenges for 2016 was to read a horror book. I probably wouldn't have ever gotten around to reading this book if not for that overlap of the Serial Reader book list and the Read Harder challenge.

It turns out that "horror" is not really a good descriptor for Frankenstein at all, in spite of how closely the image of Frankenstein's monster has come to be associated with Halloween. This is a I read Frankenstein in daily installments on the Serial Reader app because one of the Book Riot Read Harder challenges for 2016 was to read a horror book. I probably wouldn't have ever gotten around to reading this book if not for that overlap of the Serial Reader book list and the Read Harder challenge.

It turns out that "horror" is not really a good descriptor for Frankenstein at all, in spite of how closely the image of Frankenstein's monster has come to be associated with Halloween. This is actually a very slow-paced and cerebral novel told as a frame story; the first couple of chapters are about an expedition to the North Pole. The narrator finds a man near-frozen in the snow and ice, rescues him, and most of the rest of the book is that man - Victor Frankenstein - telling his life story to the narrator. We hear about his childhood, his adopted sister/love interest, and his college studies, and we get an all-too-brief mention of him discovering the secret of life and creating a humanoid creature in his lab. When the creature wakes and Frankenstein sees how hideously ugly his creation is, he's horrified by what he's done and falls into a swoon that leads to a lengthy illness; the monster, meanwhile, runs away.

The monster, it turns out, is kind and intelligent, but his physical appearance horrifies everyone so much that he is met with violence everywhere he turns. Out of anger and frustration, he murders Frankenstein's young brother, which causes Frankenstein to seek him out. The monster demands a female companion and says the two of them will leave all humans alone if they can just have each other for company; Frankenstein struggles with this request because he has seen the monster's capacity for violence and can't trust that a second creature will agree to be bound to the first creature's promise even if the first creature never harms anyone again. The tale the monster tells Frankenstein is heartbreaking and the ethical dilemma the book presents is a complex one that seems to have no possible right answer.

I enjoyed reading Frankenstein, and it was interesting to see how different the novel is from the popular image of Frankenstein's monster two hundred years after the book was published. It's a slow book, and not without its flaws (Frankenstein himself is a pretty awful, mopey, self-centered character), but overall I liked it and am glad I read it. ...more

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