Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I wanted to like it. I really, really wanted to. It is, after all, one of those books that has become almost legendary. I know a few people who love it, including one who has mentioned in conversation plenty of times that she feels bad for the monster.

I don't.

What happened here is that a teenage girl had a wonderfully frightening idea for a story to thrill her male companions. Then she wrote it and made the kind of mistakes that young authors tend to make. She took her horrifying tale and smothered it with morals. This is the type of writing that wouldn't make it past a 300 level creative writing class. There is too much that feels faked and forced and coincidental to a level that is positively exhausting.

It was exhausting to read. I could barely get five pages in before passing out where ever I was sitting. It was suggested that perhaps the language of the period was the issue but it was really the period of inaction that felt as if they dragged on forever. I ended up downloading a free copy to my Kindle and having a larger font helped but still it dragged on. I had less than 25% of the book left for well over a week but, as I said, the moment I started reading I fell asleep.

As for sympathy, I suppose that Shelley managed to create enough moral friction to arouse discussion. Who is the real monster? Is it Frankenstein or his monster? It is true that Frankenstein created the monster, which was probably not right. However, the monster obviously has free will and chooses to do evil. Nobody had my sympathy except possibly Frankenstein's father. Even Elizabeth annoyed me, mostly because she was such a very flat character.

My final opinion on this one, as given to a seventeen year old boy was, "If you have to read it for a class, do so. Otherwise, don't waste your time."