Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Maybe this is squinting at a story and warping it to fit aPhantom mould but just bear with me for a little while.

Frankenstein’s Monster (we shall call him Fred for the rest of this post), Fred, just wants to be loved, yes? And yet he turns into the kind of person that he does because of the way he is treated and the way that others react to him – hmmm….this sounding familiar to anyone?

The only thing that Fred requests of Frankenstein is afemale, a mate who looks the same as he does and will not be disgusted by hisappearance. All Erik wants is to be like any other man and have a wife and a home.

I also got thinking about this a little before I began typing – yeah, occasionally I think.

So here goes what I think.

Fred wanted someone who could match his appearance, a woman who had been patched together from the corpses of others. No I am not going into how Erik thinks of himself as a living corpse – although come to think of it there is a comparison there for you. But moving on.

So we have established that Fred was looking for a woman who was his equal in a physical sense. Maybe, just maybe, Erik was searching forthat one woman who was also his equal but not in a physical sense but in avocal way. Looking for that one person who could fit his voice and blend with him. After all, music is his life, his oxygen so why would that not carry onto any potential relationships. Sorry I am not putting this very clearly. Moving on before I dig myself into a hole. Now the phantom bits are done time for the rest of the post.

Obsessed with creating life itself, Victor Frankenstein plunders graveyards for the material to fashion a new being, which he shocks into life with electricity. But his botched creature, rejected by Frankenstein and denied human companionship, sets out to destroy his maker and all that he holds dear. 

I am ashamed to say that this is the first time I have even considered checking this book out. The only kind of history I have with this story is probably the same as many other peoples. The films and the TV sketches. In never really appealed to me. But I was pleasantly surprised by this novel.

It has everything.

Suspense, horror, sci-fi, crime, drama, romance. Like I said EVERYTHING!

I was actually really surprised by how sad and emotional I found in places, which caught me by surprise since I wasn't expecting it to be like that at all. I can't really go into the story a great deal as this was once again an abridges version. *shiver*. But one thing that I found a bit strange was the educated way that the monster spoke. You wouldn't have thought that this guy had been patched together from various bodies when he spoke. That stuck out to me. Perhaps there is a lesson there that appearances can be deceiving.

Frankenstein himself struck me as being a very selfish, weak, idiotic kind of man. All the way through he assumed that the monster was going to make him suffer by killing him. Idiot! This guy is smarter than that and knows that the way to torture Frankenstein is to pick off his loved ones. And it is not like he wasn't provoked. All the monster wanted was a mate, a female of 'his kind' to have by his side and share the life that he was being forced to live with him.

Frankenstein accepts this but then keeps putting it off and putting it off. The guy is a moron. He says himself that there was no knowing what the monster would do and he still continued to procrastinate in the construction of a female monster. And even went on wee holiday in between times. *cough* IDIOT *cough* Oh pardon me.

And then he changes his mind and refuses to create a female - to the monsters face!! And you know that everything is just going to go down hill from there.

And what else. He just has to rub it in the monsters face by getting married doesn't he. I am sorry! But anyone can see that is just adding insult to injury. I think I would have lost my temper good and proper at that point to if I were the monster.

His best friend, his wife and then his father all die (or are murdered - brownie points for whoever can guess who the murderer was)and then he is locked in an asylum because he is thought to be mad. But the dude was a moron in my humble opinion anyway. But he gets out of the asylum and the story continues.

I couldn't help but find it funny that Frankenstein describes the monster as being being selfish and yet I can only see the selfishness and idiocy in Frankenstein. I do not blame the monster for wanting a companion.

All in all very enjoyable if depressing book.

So there is Frankenstein for you :)

Narrator - Richard Pasco

Length - 3hrs 6mins

Published - 28/05/2005

Once again this was an ABRIDGED version of the story. Bah, humbug. It was nice and easy to listen to an easy to follow, despite having the majority of the story missing. :( The reader had a nice voice that wasn't hard to listen to for hours and I could clearly tell when he was speaking as Frankenstein, the monster or Walton.