3.0
Frankissstein
ByPublisher Description
. Nineteen-year-old Mary Shelley is inspired to write a story about a scientist who creates a new life-form. In Brexit Britain, a young transgender doctor called Ry is falling in love with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor leading the public debate around AI and carrying out some experiments of his own in a vast underground network of tunnels. Meanwhile, Ron Lord, just divorced and living with his mom again, is set to make his fortune launching a new generation of sex dolls. Across the Atlantic, in Phoenix, Arizona, a cryogenics facility houses dozens of bodies of men and women who are medically and legally dead . . . but waiting to return to life.
Since her astonishing debut
, Jeanette Winterson has achieved worldwide acclaim as "one of the most daring and inventive writers of our time" (
). In
, she shares an audacious love story that weaves together disparate lives into an exploration of transhumanism, artificial intelligence, and queer love.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesFrankissstein Reviews
3.0
“Firstly, since when did quotation marks go out of fashion? This is speech heavy and I often had to re-read sections to interpret what was speech and from whom.
I liked the idea of AI and futuristic technologies being a mirror of the Frankenstein story but also the ideology of technology from different ages of the past. Clever writing in this respect and definitely made me question life and the future of our world.
But sadly, the whole thing was a bit weird - I think the book would be better without sexbots - and I didn’t like how Ry, a trans character, was portrayed. There is a sexual assault that is never mentioned again, the character doesn’t seem clear about his own identity and is constantly misgendered and harassed without any opposing viewpoint. Even in his intimate relationship he seems to be used.
I didn’t get the ending - was Victor supposed to be a time traveller? Send help and biscuits…”
“Listened to this on audiobook as well, and I absolutely fell in love with Ry Shelley's character. It was addictive and intimate, and so interesting in a uniquely Jeanette Winterson manner. I think there's something for everyone here — the romance lovers, the history enjoyers, the physical AND social science enthusiasts, and the philosophes. The relationship between Victor and Ry just had me enthralled and the arguments from Mary Shelley were quite sharp, though I believe the real star of the writing was how expressly and how boldly Winterson wrote these absolute characters. As a person who rarely puts any importance on the gender and sexual binary, and whose identity does not exist within that realm, I found it refreshing and relatable in a way I never quite see in the usual 'stick a label on' that (although works for many people) I find myself trying to distance myself from. Only issue I really had with the audiobook was whoever was reading for the Brexit portions with Ry was just immensely bad at accents and having this Northern British man trying to play Claire, this black woman from Tennessee, was just absolutely criminal. I was actually so confused by the performance I couldn't tell if it was the writing or the performance that felt utterly racist.”
BelievableDiverse representationLikeableMorally ambiguousMultilayeredOriginalUnforgettable protagonistAddictiveNonlinear narrativeTwistyUnpredictableFuturisticGrittySetting fits the storyUnique locationBeautifully-writtenWittyExplicit sexual contentMisogynyReligious intoleranceSexual assaultTransphobiaViolence
About Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson CBE was born in Manchester, England. After graduating from Oxford University she published her first novel at 25,
, to widespread acclaim and a BAFTA for her BBC TV adaption. Twenty-seven years later she revisited that material in the bestselling memoir
She has written 10 novels for adults, as well as children's books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester. She believes that art is for everyone and it is her mission to prove it.
Other books by Jeanette Winterson
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