Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

Oh, how I loved Jeannette Winterson's Frankissstein (and the gorge cover art, which helps makes sense of those extra esses!) Winterson, who's such a genius at mixing contemporary language and thought while telling an "old" tale, brilliantly merges the stories of Mary and Percy Shelley, Byron and Co., as they famously shared a house in Italy in 1816 and Mary began writing the novel Frankenstein, with a contemporary (perhaps in the not-to-distant future) cast of characters that resemble (/are?) that group.  Ry Shelley is a doctor researching the effect of robots on humans' health. Ry is transgendered and confuses many of the other characters by not presenting as a binary figure, but they are firmly and happily secure in their non-binary body.  I don't want to reveal the other names because I think they're rather clever and will leave that to the reader to discover.  Anyway, Ry meets with various people involved in robotics, hilariously, a man who creates sex-bots and thinks they're the wave of the future (and makes a pretty good case for it, tbh). 

Winterson conjures all sorts of fascinating themes in her book including where (and if) the nature of the soul resides in the body and the created body (ie Frankenstein's monster, sex-bots, and characters in books); creativity and computation; the mind and the computer as a holder of knowledge; and the ownership of creation - you know, like a lot of the stuff that makes us human.

Joy of joys, I also convinced husband to read this book which was a particular coup for moi, filling me with a pride unparalleled since he started using the term "toxic masculinity" with some regularity.  I personally loved the bits re: the nineteenth century while husband naturally enjoyed the 21st.  Percy and Byron are lauded as these brilliant British master poets and meanwhile there's this trickling little side story that goes, Oh, did you know Mary Shelley wrote one of the most enduring stories in the English language and, oh yeah, she was only 19?  But what Winterson draws out is her enduring humanity, mourning the loss of her children while trying to maintain a semblance of a home while her husband flits around renting homes in broke-down mansions in remote locations.  Mary's frustrations build to a culminating excoriation of the male poet:

 "His lordship upholds the law when it suits him. So do they all. Revolutionaries and radicals until it touches on property - and that includes women and children. Till it comes to whatever hurts them personally. Whatever checks their stride. God! Their infidelities, their indifference, their insensitivity. Great God! The insensitivity of poets. [...] 

How many 'great artists? How many dead/mad/disused/forgotten/blames and fallen women?"  

As startling and electrifying as Mary's rage is, Ry's experience as a trans person - amidst their careful academic exploration is an event of shocking violence that the reader learns has happened multiple times before and they quietly deal with, knowing from past experience that notifying the police will not help.  The sudden violence was a visceral reminder of how unsafe life can be for trans people - it comes without warning or reason.  The disruption I felt as a reader was merely a glimpse of what it must be like to experience that as a person, and I thank Winterson for showing me a bit of what that might feel like. 

So many wonderful things wrapped into this relatively small book, not least of all how reading and writing are such amicable contributors to our human experience.  Frankissstein is really a must-read for book lovers.