Frankissstein, A Love Story by Jeanette Winterson

I’d heard so many great things about this book - that it was funny, astonishing and bold and that it should be a queer retelling of Frankenstein’s Monster - but unfortunately its turned out to be such a huge disappointment to me. The lack of a concise narrative and characters to root for just didn’t make it interesting enough to get me fully engaged. And as for funny (I’ve seen quotes about this book saying that “I found myself vibrating with laughter”), it was just obviously not my kind of humor. But worst of all, the trans representation was so horribly done that it made me feel utterly uncomfortable and almost stopped me from finishing this book.

In short, Frankissstein has two parallel story lines. In one part, this book was a reanimation of Frankenstein and a fictionalized life story of Mary Shelley. In the other part there was a futuristic sci fi story of Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor self-described as a “hybrid” and her love story with Victor Stein, a celebrated professor working at the forefront of AI research. The story shifted between the parallel stories set in early 19th century and the present day focus with Ry Shelley and Victor Stein and his work at a cryonics facility, as well as with Ron Lord, who is set to make his fortune with a new generation of sex dolls.

As the stories moved forward, the two timelines became more and more tangled and the characters seemed to jump through time and space, but it still felt very fragmented. It’s clear that Jeanette Winterson wanted to show the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the implications of both transsexuality and transhumanism, but also to raise questions about the responsibilities of creation. What happens when homo sapiens are no longer the smartest being on the planet? It’s a very ambitious approach, but unfortunately it all fell flat and the story line was just too weird and unengaging, and the characters weren’t likable enough to excite me. I especially disliked the sex robot maker Ron and think the book would have been better without him, I honestly don’t think that the sex bots plot slid in well with the main story at all. And on top of that the way to describe transpersons as “hybrids” just didn’t sit well with me. It felt utterly homophobic to portray “trans” as a third gender option.

​So even though I can appreciate the ambitious approach and the unique potential (hence the 2 stars instead of 1 that I first wanted to give), this is unfortunaly not a book I can recommend to anyone.

Rating:
2 stars

​Author info:
Jeanette Winterson