This book followed The Man Who Was Thursday in my Colombia leisure reading. It started off strong, but by the end I was thoroughly disappointed. This book may have been whinier than even Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. I really don’t care how anguished Frankenstein was over creating the monster, or how emotionally devastated the monster was about being rejected by humankind. A sentence or two – maybe even a full paragraph, to be generous – would have sufficed to communicate that they weren’t very happy people. Furthermore, I did not find many of the characters very interesting. Clerval was a good fellow, the monster was somewhat interesting, the poor French peasants in the cottage had a touching story, but that was about it. I suppose Frankenstein was alright before he went emo, and I do support his decision not to make a second monster based on his Scotland reasoning (his initial reasons on the ice field did not satisfy me). I never really connected to any of the other characters, particularly Elizabeth. I really didn’t care very much about her at all.
I did like how the story was set inside a collection of letters. That was a neat idea. And I also approved of the fact that the guy writing the letters (I forget his name) decided not to drag his crew on a hopeless adventure. I’m sure I could find other nice things to say about the book, but I’m not sure what they are. Given my liking for efficiency, wasting over a hundred pages on whining was enough to completely estrange me from this book.
Book Information
Title: Frankenstein
Author: Mary Shelley
Year Published: 1818
No comments:
Post a Comment