Took me two months to finish this audiobook. Allow me to crudely stitch together my thoughts on this novel into a monstrosity of a "review." • The best sleep aid I’ve discovered since Valerian root. No lie, no joke, no shade. 1x, 1.5x, 2x speed, doesn’t matter. Lying on a soft bed in a dark room or cruising down the interstate at 75 mph, doesn’t matter. Within 20 minutes of any track of this audiobook, I’m nodding off. • The histrionic and hyperbolic language of Georgian-era prose makes me tune out and turn off. (Oh, did the lineaments of his soul shine through his face? Really, wow.) • My mom and I listened to this on a 3-hour drive to New Orleans. If ever in a similar situation, I recommend you and the other person divide up the following words: benevolent/benevolence, wretch/wretched, countenance, horror. Each time you hear one of your words the other person owes you a nickel/quarter/shot/etc. • The monster has flowing black hair and white teeth (and watery eyes and wrinkled skin), moves with "superhuman speed", and stands about 8 feet tall... I don't think I've ever seen an adaptation/depiction of this character that is true to Shelley's description. • The monster tells his own story and the gist is he was a stalker creeping on a family in the woods, formed a para-social infatuation with them and approached the most vulnerable one when alone (blind father), gets rebuffed for his creepiness and vows revenge on all humans. (Yeah, he saved a woman from drowning and got shot by her boyfriend for it so he's not completely unsympathetic.) • Victor Frankenstein makes me cringe. Upon seeing the monster: “Rage and hatred had at first deprived me of utterance, and I recovered only to overwhelm him with words expressive of furious detestation and contempt: ‘Devil!’ I exclaimed, ‘Do you dare approach me? and do not you fear the fierce vengeance of my arm wreaked on your miserable head? Be gone, vile insect! Or, rather, stay that I may trample you to dust! And ohh that I could, with the extinction of your miserable existence, restore those victims whom you have so diabolically murdered'” (Chapter 10, Track 10, 03:16:28—03:16:59). • Monster vows revenge in a badass way (“I will be with you on your wedding night”)

The constant turnover and varied quality of narration was a barrier at first, but became a compelling analogy of the misshapen monster itself over time. I’m familiar with a number of cinematic retellings of the story so it was good to come back to the source material to consider the points of departure various screen writers had taken. Much has been made of the anti-immigrant subtext of Bram Stoker’s Dracula but, while Switzerland has a long history of representing the exotic in British and European fiction (from Shelley to Conan Doyle and Hitchcock - even Nietzsche found the abyss there) I hadn’t considered Frankenstein through this lens. The numerous accents and inflections in this reading made that almost impossible to avoid.

Amazing book, and considering the author was only nineteen years old, when published, makes it all the more remarkable. I believe the story was inspired by Mary Shelley’s relationship with with her husband; The monster being his fame, which could be compared to a modern rock star. Also the tragedy of losing a child, is reflected in the novel. The idea of using written correspondence to explain the story, was copied much later, by Bram Stoker, in “Dracula”

It was difficult with so many narrators. Some were good, a couple very food, but some not so much and then it was distracting. There were a lot of glitches in the audiobook, ie example end of sentence twice during attempts to re-re-record it. The story itself was interesting.

I found much of this book a little tedious. The monster is description of his life was very good! Clearly a teenage girl trying to describe a man's emotions.