Frankenstein

Rating:
Summary: You don't have to read this
Review: Yeah, I don't have to say anything about this book because it has already been said. But I will say that I love it. So much so that I had an entire dream in Shelley's prose. All of the characters were speaking so eloquently that I knew it had to be a dream. Oh, Frankenstein is not the monster, he is the creator. The monster is not an oaf either. He picked up an entire language in a year or something. Sharp dude...or dudes. Another recommendation.

Hoo-ah!

Rating:
Summary: Eloquently Written Horror Classic
Review: Frankenstein exceeded my expectations that were based on movies I have seen by the same title. This book is a literary masterpiece that sets a bar for terror that is yet to be surpassed.

I was very impressed by the writing skill of Shelley. She does a terrific job telling this story, using three narrators that offer different points of view and voices.

The monster is a character that elicited sympathy, respect, anger and hatred. He is intelligent and articulate in a way I did not expect. His ability to convey emotions and thoughts creates mixed emotions about him. Yet, because his hatred and anger prevail, these emotions prevailed in me too in my regards of him.

Shelley shows the danger of allowing one's ambitions to overtake balance and reason. We see the character of Dr. Frankenstein forsake all to see this dream of creating life realized. We see the consequences of his actions that are a warning to us to tread more cautiously regarding our ambitions.

All of the characters are developed comprehensively.

I enjoyed reading this but had to set it aside at times because of the tragedy it entails. You know where the story is headed but still hold out some hope that it will turn out more positively--like watching Titanic, you know it is going to sink but still hope maybe it won't.

I think this is a timeless classic you should read.

Rating:
Summary: Ahead of its time; exquisitely written, terrrifying novel
Review: I was surprised by the literary beauty of this book and by its intriguing horror. It was not at all what I had expected based on my exposure to Frankenstein movies and tales. This story is quite different in many ways that make it more appealing to the reader.

The tale involves a monster that is truly hideous in form but reveals a conflicted mind and heart. Shelley effectively causes the reader to have mixed feelings about this creature that wields destruction while confessing its own misery and affection for humanity.

She also conveys the dangers of a person pursuing his or her ambition at the cost of other values such as relationships and peace.

The novel is told in an innovative fashion. Shelley uses three different narrators to tell the story. This creates some variety in the point of view and in the voice of the narrator.

This book is very compelling, but at times I had to put it down due to the tragedy of it. The whole time you know where its events are leading and a part of you wants to go there and another part wants to avoid it--like watching Titanic, you know it is going to sink but you still hold out some hope it won't and you try to avoid its definitive demise.

I think this is a horror story that has yet to be surpassed in literature. I really felt for the characters, including the monster. I was completely entertained by the skillful writing.

Rating:
Summary: Not a Bad Book at All!!
Review: The novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley starts off very uninteresting. In the beginning, a man writes letters to his sister in England but the story soon begins to pick up. Don't be discouraged when you read the first page or two. Give it a chance you will learn to love this story.
This novel is definitely not the same as the black and white movies you may have seen. Mary Shelley shows a whole new side to the monster in her novel. There are many conflicts and themes in this story. There is love, hate, and the most obvious rage. This is a classic story of a gothic monster gone mad and even though it was written well over 100 years ago it can still scare the pants off of people today.
This book touches on the main problem in society, acceptance. There are so many people out there who will change their look, their attitude and their entire lifestyle just to be accepted. This relates to me because I am now in high school and I have observed people who will do anything to be accepted. In my opinion it is ok to want to be accepted but when a person is willing to harm themselves, just to have more friends, that is not ok with me. Mary Shelley shows us the reality of life in this wonderfully touching story.

Rating:
Summary: Better than the movies
Review: As with many of the other reviews for this novel, I too was surprised to find that the original character bore little resemblance to the movie representation. This monster was not actually called Frankenstein, it was not slow and lumbering, it was not stupid or incapable of speech. While the literary critics have been historically slow to warm to this novel, it is a work of substantive quality and structure. It also conveys a powerful message about good versus evil, vanity, and personal responsibility. This novel is really, in a lot of ways, more than a horror story, its about how people view themselves and those around them. There is much debate (in literary circles) around whether or not Mary Shelley actually wrote the novel of her own accord or whether she had a good deal of help. I would suggest the paucity of anything else even remotely in the class of Frankenstein would lead one to certain suspicions.

Rating:
Summary: A lot a substance, but no style...
Review: I have read numerous reviews of this book, and all of them emphasized two extreme: The book is a masterpiece of horror and examination of human nature, or the book is an utter abomination that does not live up to expectations. Upon reading the book, I failed to see how it has stood the test of time so well, with so many people proclaiming it a masterpiece. On the other hand, it saddens me to see that some people are so narrow minded as to decry the book merely because it does not live up to its reputation as horror novel.

However, in the end one must observe Frankenstein as a literary work in general and not a horror novel whose plot and story have been so twisted and mutilated since its publication with countless inaccurate films and a lack of people who have actually read the book. When I look at it in this sense, I'm afraid I must still look upon this work with poor esteem. I stumbled upon a review crying out for people to recognize the depth of this book and not write it off as a horror novel, and I agree with that reviewer; the book does have depth, exploring the human condition in a truely unique way. However, there is no point in praising a literary work based simply upon the depth of the themes. No matter how deep a novel it, in the end you still have to read it, and that is the trouble with Frankenstein. The themes presented in the book can not be assertained because the execution of it is horrendous. Whether you want to view it as a book of horror or not, one can't help but notice how incredibly bland and drawn out this book is. It is difficult to stay awake, let alone be captivated, by a book that is so saturated with hyperbole and displaced emotion. Perhaps if Shelley spent more time developing her characters rather than simply focusing on the exaggerated emotional states of Victor and the Creature, story might actually seem plausible; instead, the character are uniformly formily immaculate and possess the same emotional expressions as Victor. The only two character that show any distinction are Victor and his father.

Also, the plot itself is detestably unrealitistic. Of course a common complaint is that the creation of the monster is not described at all in detail, and, although the actual process of creation is not important for the developement of the themes of the book, I would have to agree that it wouldn't hurt the show the reader some plausibilty. Also, it is difficult to grasp the concept that as a human being it takes the average person about a year to learn how to read on a seccond grade level, yet the monster is able to teach himself how to read without the aid of a teacher possessing the knowledge of the fundamental concepts of written language and comprehend works by Ovid and Aristotle in a matter of months, not to mention speak more articulately than I can.

In essence, Frankenstein is certainly credible for its depth, but anyone can be a philosopher. Unfortuantely, literature is an art, and, therefore it takes a talented author to create a reabable and enjoyable vehicle for such insight. If you can't read a book, it's not good.

Rating:
Summary: More Relevant Today Than When First Written
Review: Modern readers must jump through a number of hoops to enjoy this legendary novel. Written between 1816 and 1818, this is very much a novel of its era, and both language and ideas about plot are quite different from those of today. That aside, and unlike such contemporaries as Jane Austen, author Mary Shelly has never been greatly admired for her literary style, which is often awkward. But perhaps the biggest hurdle is that of our own expectations: while it certainly sent icy chills down the spines of 19th Century readers, FRANKENSTEIN is not a horror novel per se.

While Mary Shelly might have been stylistically weak, her story was not. Nothing like it had been written before, and the concept of a student endowing life upon a humanoid creature cobbled together from charnel house parts was unexpectedly shocking to the reading public. But even more shocking were the ideas that Shelly brought to the story. Having created this thing in his own image, what--if anything--does the creator owe it? And in posing this question, Shelly very deliberately raises her novel to an even more complex level: this is not merely the conflict of man and his creation, but also a questioning of God and his responsibility toward his creation.

In some respects, the book is written like the famous philosophical "dialogues" of the ancient world: a counterpoint of questions and arguments that do battle for the reader's acceptance. More than anything else, FRANKENSTEIN is a novel of ethics and of ideas about ideas, with Mary Shelly's themes arrayed in multiple layers throughout: God, self, society, science; responsibility to self, to society, to the things we bring to society, to the truth; life, integrity, and death--these are the ideas and issues that predominate the book, and any one expecting a horror novel pure and simple is out of luck.

Mary Shelly is a rare example of a writer whose ideas clearly outstrip her literary skill--but whose ideas are so powerful that they transcend her literary limitations and continue to resonate today. And indeed, as science continues to advance, it could not be otherwise so. Mary Shelly could not see into the future of DNA research, laboratory-grown tissues, test-tube babies and the like--but between 1816 and 1818 she wrote a book about the ethical dilemmas that swirl around them. And for all its flaws, FRANKENSTEIN is perhaps even more relevant today than it was over a hundred and fifty years ago.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: Frankenstein
Review: When I started this book I did not expect to be able to read it without falling asleep in the middle, but when I did begin, I realized I couldn't put it down. My teacher assigned this book for my english class and I assumed it to be exactly like all the other ones: boring, containing lots of big words, and having a bunch of quizzes over it. I do indeed have a test to look forward to, but the book was definitely not boring and although it had many "big words" they were not undecipherable. The plot is well developed and filled with interesting descriptions and events, however, she leaves many loose ends, but I don't want to spoil the story. Unlike the classic movie, Shelley describes Frankenstein's creature (no... Frankenstein is the SCIENTIST not the monster) as an intellectual, (how else could she use her fancy words...? ^_^) and as the story progresses, I winced at Frankenstein's stupidity. Towards the end, one finds it hard to decide which individual to pity, because both have suffered so much. This novel is one that I truly enjoyed and I hope that you will like it as well.

Rating:
Summary: Over-rated and over-written
Review: I read a condensed kiddies version of this when I was 8. I liked it better because it got to the point right away and lacked the increasingly dull indulgence in using zillions of paragraphs to describe things that don't really have anything to do with the story. It comes as a rather large surprise that this book is held in such high literary regard. Perhaps back in 18-something it may have been scary but by modern literary standards I'm afraid to say that Frankenstein is gibberish.

Perhaps this stems from the fact that Mary Shelley just wrote this for a laugh. She, Lord Byron and another pal were on Holiday in Switzerland and had a competition on who could write the scariest story. Shelly instantly came up with this, which is probably why it seems so uninspired, unfocused and meandering. Granted, the subtext is interesting enough, even to this day, but that's not what the book is about.

Shelley does go on a bit. Far, far too much time is wasted on set-up and over-description (her love of the Swiss countryside is evident in the dozens of pointless paragraphs describing the landscape) when it should really just be getting to the point. And then when the point finally arrives...it's underwritten. It feels like the book is nothing but filler. I mean when the monster/beast/wretch/daemon/creature is being created Shelly hardly writes anything. Where did Frankenstein get the parts? How did he put it all together? How did he actually bring it to life? She doesn't even have a full or half-full description of what the monster looked like. This could have been interesting in a macabre way but it's ignored.

And what's the deal with the monster going from not being able to speak or understand language to talking like some sort of Oxford professor within a few months? It's so far-fetched and hard to swallow. Tho there is sympathy to be had for the monster and doubt whenever Frankenstein badmouths him.

Another problem is the actual storytelling. The narration shifts 5 times in the course of this book and it becomes most annoying. I suppose this benefits the views of 3 different people but when they conflict in no way or contribute to the story what's the point? Frankenstein should have had tighter editing? For what it is it's a decent tragedy but NOT horror of any kind.

Rating:
Summary: Scary how bad it is...
Review: I knew little of the story when I picked up this book. In fact, I was one of those people who thought the monster's name was Frankenstein. Whoops... Anyways, I found that the narrative structure of the book to be distracting, the stereotypical characters annoying, and the monster actually coming alive (taking place in less than a paragraph) to be a let down.