Frankissstein: A Love Story

DNF at 8% I just couldn't stand the narrator that kind of whispery and moist voice is just unbearable to me.
No rating.

3.5⭐️ Sort of read like Theory. Meshing topics of AI and Non-binary & Trans community was interesting. Lots of civil (almost Socratic?) discourse between characters, not something we're used to in todays day and age of screaming wars...

Bringing Mary Shelley and Frankenstein was interesting, but a good break from the present day discourse content.

Whelp, I'm conservative now

This wasn't a difficult read. I like Winterson's writing style, though I also get people scoffing at it being very ~literary~ with the lack of quotation marks and whatnot.
I really enjoyed the stuff from Mary Shelley's point of view. Her talking about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be alive while living the horror of continually losing her children in infancy - she lost three before her fourth child survived.

The modern stuff I wanted to like, I'm interested in the idea of living past our lifetimes, life extension and brain uploads etc., but the characters were weirdly one dimensional. The sexbot seller, the southern black woman leveraging sexbots for God, they didn't really do anything for me at all. Ry, the protagonist, is an interesting character. I like how they talk about gender, and they feel to me like a representation of some of the more fluid gender presentations and genderqueer identities. Unfortunately everyone else in the story treats them like a freak and doesn't respect their name and there's an awful sexual assault scene later on so whatever Ry is supposed to represent, the future of gender or the success of body modification technology or how we'll all be able to feel more comfortable with a more fluid idea of what a body can be (or the idea of not having a body at all!), the world is not at all ready for this. Ry is not allowed to be. Ry, whose last name is Shelley, is the future counterpart of Mary Shelley, who is also not allowed to be because of her gender. It's the other counterparts that don't track for me. Ron Lord, the sexbot seller and presumably the Lord Byron counterpart, kind of just feels like a juvenile dig at Byron to me? And Victor Stein, for all his talk of brain scanning and moving past our bodies, is adamant that Ry's genitals make him NOT GAY despite Ry's presentation and identity. He thinks that freeing us of our bodies will free our minds but he can't even conceive of a sexual orientation outside of STRAIGHT and GAY.

I'm not sure how much of my critiques are of the characters and how much are of the author. I can't tell what is supposed to be satire and what we're supposed to agree with. It's making me think I guess, but I don't love this kind of ambiguity when it comes to transphobia. I hope it was meant to make me uncomfortable.

Even though the name and the cover blurb might give you the feeling that you're about to read Frankenstein fanfiction (and you might not be half-wrong), this was astounding in its scope and boldness. Taking place in two time periods – the 19th and the 21st centuries – Winterson narrates the tale of a behind-the-scenes story of the writing of Frankenstein (in the former), the rise of AI and sex-bots (in the latter), and manages to merge the disparate aspects so beautifully that you feel as if you're not reading glorified fanfiction.

Mary and Percy Shelley are merged to form the trans protagonist Ry Shelley; Lord Byron becomes a flamboyant entrepreneur called Ron Lord, and so on – only the tragic Dr Frankenstein remains the same. The juxtaposition of characters should not have worked so well, but here we are.

To give you an idea of the sheer scope of the novel, some issues that Frankissstein tackles with aplomb are - feminism in the Victorian era compared to the modern era; how different the lives of cis and trans people are (the refrain ‘What are you' in the 21st century used for Ry is surprising, but considering many people are of this mind-set, not that unexpected); the debate on the value of a woman as more than her body (Ron Lord's USP for his sex-bots is that ‘they don't say no'); and the age-old debate on automation, AI and Luddites. All of this takes place in paragraphs which are so densely packed with witty information that you have to read some twice before it strikes you how good Winterson is as an author and as a conveyor of ideas.

This is one of those stories with a premise that is as outrageous as it sounds, but it works so well that you cannot help but wait to reread it. Would highly recommend.

I am a poor specimen of a creature, except that I can think.

This review can also be found on my blog.
[edit: changing my rating to 1 star because, honestly, i kind of hated this book.]

It is an understatement to say that I have issues with this book. I should preface this review with the caveat that while I am queer, I am also cis, so my opinions are colored by that. If you're an ownvoices reviewer and would like me to link to your review, please let me know! Edit: Here is a great one-star review posted over at Revolution in the Pages!

I took great issue with Winterson's portrayal of a trans person. Ry is a character completely without agency. Every single person they come into contact with in the book misgenders them and while on occasion they will make an effort to correct someone or to explain their identity, they feel like nothing more than a plot device to fuel a discussion surrounding gender rather than an actual character. At one point Ry is physically attacked, demeaned, and left alone cowering on the ground in a scene that seemed to hold little-to-no meaning in the greater plot. They were constantly fetishized and objectified by Victor, who seemed to think of them little more than a toy and a sex object. They were defined solely by their relationship to Victor and their trans identity. It seemed that Ry had no trans friends (really, no friends at all) and when Victor mentioned that he had never met a trans person before, Ry just replied that most people haven't. If this is indeed set in the present or near future, I find that an absurd statement. Many cis people may think they have not met a trans person, but they would have no way of knowing.

It's horrible, I said.
You're a doctor, he said. You know how useful horrible is.

None can know the human mind. No, not if he read every thought man ever wrote. Every word written is like a child striking a flame against the darkness. When we are alone it is the darkness that remains.

Even our best endeavours turn against us. A loom that can do the work of eight men should free eight men from servitude. Instead, seven skilled men are put out of work to starve with their families, and one skilled man becomes the unskilled minder of the mechanical loom. What is the point of progress if it benefits the few while the many suffer?

content warnings:

Weer een gevalletje niet helemaal gelukte expectation management...

Twee verhaallijnen (een in het verleden, een in het heden) door elkaar verweven, over de maakbaarheid van leven, kunstmatige intelligentie, de noodzaak voor een lichaam.

Het deel dat gaat over Mary Shelley en Frankenstein is veruit het beste deel. Het deel dat in het nu speelt is mij veel te gekunsteld (hoezo “show, don't tell” met de namen van de hoofdpersonen?) en de karakters eigenlijk allemaal niet erg likable.

Als het boek zo ongeveer geeindigd was bij Ada Lovelace (met dat stuk misschien nog wat verder uitgewerkt) was het een beter boek geweest, met voldoende stof tot nadenken. Daarna dan “Fall; or, Dodge in Hell” lezen om verder na te denken wat een leven zonder lichaam zou kunnen voorstellen.