BOOKS REVIEWS
7
Frankenstein
a
We all know the Frankenstein films, however none tell the true story of the man and the monster (although Kenneth Branagh has been said to come close).
When I started this book I really liked it once I got past everyone talking in ye olde English, but the book is long, and I mean really long, and every page is full of tragedy, death and obsession so dramatic but those points are what makes the book. When an orphan girl of only 7 turns up at the door of the frankenstein household, they take her in and name her Elizabeth.
Later that year a lightning bolt hits a tree and cracks it in half in front of the eldest frankenstein child, Victor,
sparking his interest (pardon the pun).
Years later victor goes to medical university in Ingolstadt, leaving behind his love, Elizabeth. In Ingolstadt he observes the effects of an electrical current put to a dead specimen, and decides to experiment. After many months of late nights and constant study and experimental research, he decides to go the big one, a dead human. What happens that night sparks the next five years of pain, tragedy and a slow decent into madness of a man who wanted to play God.
The characters are so deep and diverse that their change throughout the book is so real, be that change from youth to adulthood, sanity to madness, or living to dead.
Mary Shelley does a brilliant job of setting scenes and describing environments. As victor was traveling through Europe and Asia or when he traveled to Ingolstadt to receive his collage education in science and biology, you could almost feel the mountains and the lakes around you. It was clever that Mary Shelley skipped over some of the descriptions later on in the book when Victor becomes more obsessed over the monster.
Ryan S.J Bovenizer.