CBR10 BINGO: This Old Thing (BINGO!) I wanted to title this one “Victor Frankenstein was a real d-bag” but I didn’t want to malign a 200-year-old classic like that. I know that I’m supposed to appreciate this book but I don’t. I tried several times over the years to read this and bailed early on. Aside from Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, I tend to not like Gothic or Gothic adjacent fiction. It just makes me roll my eyes. In the interest of securing that last BINGO square during […]
An epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other
[BINGO!] I’ve been mulling over this review of Frankenstein for a couple of weeks now and I have so many thoughts and feelings! I’ll first admit that I had never read Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus before this year, and truly believed that the gothic horror story was just the same as James Whale’s Frankenstein movie. And it is not. At all. The same. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin Shelley wrote her epic tale about the hopelessness of being The Other, of the misery of the life unwanted, and uncared for. The monster is a […]
Truth Time: Victor Frankenstein is a Dick
Hollywood can’t get Frankenstein right. We all grew up thinking that the Frankenstein monster was this green, groaning thing was stupid and aimlessly looking for people to murder. The reason why Hollywood can’t get it right is because while people do die in the book, it’s not a traditional horror novel. Instead, it’s a quiet study of what makes us human and what happens when our basic needs aren’t met. It’s a gentle argument that we are shaped into the people we are rather than born […]
This is what happens when you get overly ambitious about your science projects
I refuse to spoilertag anything in this review, because people, this book is nearly 200 years old. You’ve had ample time to read this book, if anything in my review spoils it for you, on your own head be it. Captain Robert Walton writes letters to his sister Margaret, recounting his journey to the North Pole in a quest for scientific fame. He writes of the strange and charismatic man they rescue in the wilderness, a Victor Frankenstein. Through Walton’s letters, we also get Frankenstein’s […]