This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel

Hello, here's a link to anindita's post on Kenneth Oppel's This Dark Endeavor. I really loved this book and would love to hear what other people think about it. She provides a link, as well, but I'm also linking my referenced review @ B&N. And, of course, the inevitable Mary Shelley tag here at LJ.

Mary Shelley remains an enigma to me. I think this portion from the B&N review best summarizes her appeal for me:

One very creepy scene in Oppel’s book deals with the restoration of an ancient book whose pages have become fused together. Oppel’s Victor narrates, “And for a moment the book seemed not a book at all but a living body, and instead of paper, I glimpsed pulsing viscera and blood and organs. I blinked again, not trusting my vision. But --- and this was most strange and repulsive --- the book seemed to emanate the smell of a slaughterhouse, of entrails and offal."

This curious scene gives life, not only to the later monster --- which has not yet made an appearance by the end of Oppel’s book --- but to one of the interesting critical interpretations of Mary Shelley’s book. The sense that the monster (and it’s important to note that in Mary Shelley’s work the monster remains unnamed; it is only later monsters that have taken on the name of their creator: Frankenstein) is not just constructed of bits and pieces of human bodies, but bits and pieces of philosophy: a sort of living word. The monster’s strange education --- like Shelley’s own --- is cobbled together from his overhearing the conversations of others. What is most moving about Frankenstein is the eloquent voice Mary Shelley ultimately gives the monster. The monster comes across as more sympathetic, more human, than its creator, despite the acts of vengeance it enacts upon its creator and his family...

... in many ways it [Frankenstein] is the most significant --- and complete --- record we have of Mary Shelley’s life and work. It is also one of the more complete works that survives that cold summer in Switzerland. Each of the persons present the night Frankenstein was born kept journals and wrote letters, but over the years the record was lost, altered, or destroyed outright in keeping with changing mores. Mary Shelley herself significantly altered the record when it came to her husband, Percy, and it is largely due to her work that he enjoys the reputation he does today. What little we know about Mary Shelley and her life is a creature as cobbled together as her monster, and it speaks as eloquently---and as cryptically---as her most famous creation.

@ Anindita.org: http://www.anindita.org/2011/11/this-dark-endeavor/

@ B&N: This Dark Endeavor: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein re-imagined.

Here @ LJ http://zalena.livejournal.com/tag/shelley

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

( The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides )