• Author: Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
• Publisher: Penguin Random House – Vintage Classics
• Publishing year: 2025 (first edition: 1818)
• Pages: 218
• Cover: Icinori / Jemma Lewis Marbling & Design
• ISBN: 978-1529954302

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/372881/frankenstein-by-shelley-mary/9781529954302

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/311812/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-series-editor-guillermo-del-toro-introduction-by-elizabeth-kostova-editorial-apparatus-by-charles-e-robinson/

Review:

Who is the real Monster?

After all these years I finally, finally read Frankenstein… and I wonder now why I waited this long to pick this amazing novel up.

In short the story about Frankenstein:

The story begins with letters from a ship’s captain Walton, who reports the rescue of a man in the arctic. That man is near death and starts telling his story that started with an idea and ended up in disaster. As a young scientist, Victor Frankenstein, pushes moral boundaries as he wants to cross a frontier to bring life back to the dead. He stitches a man together with body parts of several dead men, plundered from graves, in order to create his own man / monster. Victor succeeds but afraid of his own creation he flees his lab, leaving the monster. The creature escapes and looks for its own place in this world and this life. While doing this it/he learns to read and communicate and it tries to look for connection with people, but its attempts are thwarted violently. So it seeks revenge… on its creator! Its existence leads to disaster and a chase to the arctic!

“Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful.”

I will start with a confession and I may insult a few people or maybe a lot of you might think the same, I don’t know… but I love this book 100 times more than I did Dracula last year. I was in awe of Mary Shelley’s writing, her imagery and even though it was written more than two-hundred years ago, this book feels very modern. It’s the perfect example of how a gothic novel should feel… eerie, a dark atmosphere, an ambiguous moral, us and/or abuse of science and a creature put on this earth where it has no place but now that it is, it must look for purpose and reason. Underneath the text Shelley wrote a huge question is asked here: Who is the real monster? The one that was unwillingly created and left to its own devices or the one that created it? Frankenstein is the modern Prometheus, because like the mythological figure he manages to defy the gods and conquering life over death, by gaining the power of creation through science!

Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus is in my opinion one of the best classic novels I have read so far. Not one single adaptation I have seen so far comes even close to what Shelley has tried to tell, even though some may have come close and I haven’t seen them all. But if you’ve seen one of the movies remember… the story in this book is quite different! To give one example: there’s not a lot written about how Frankenstein brought the creature back to life. You don’t read a lengthy scene with electricity or switches… also the creature in movies is often portrayed as pretty dumb and mute which is definitely not how Shelley wrote it. So keep in mind, movies have a way to add more sensation and diminish the true nature of the creature!

If you haven’t already, please read this! I highly recommend it!

“”Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live?”

There are many editions but one I will probably look for as well, is the Penguin Horror edition with intro by Guillermo del Toro, who collected some of his favourite horror stories.

For the fans of movies, this book has been adapted several times in so many different versions and stories… but si do want to mention the new movie directed by Guillermo del Toro, which will be released on Netflix in November, with Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz and Ralph Ineson.

Did you know Dean Koontz wrote a five-part sci-fi sequel to this novel? There were even graphic novels adapted from Koontz’ book(s).