Here is the classic novel of supreme horror that has held readers spellbound since its publication in 1816. This new edition will also feature an examination of the films inspired by Shelley's groundbreaking work, plus a fascinating look into genetic engineering and the modern implications of this immortal tale.
Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image … but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.

Customer Rating:
Summary: Promises kept
Comment: Like Poe, strong roots in its Gothic horror era make this story too wordy to be read as a contemporary classic (contradiction in terms, I suppose), but the basic storyline does stand up over time.

A basic story, by the way, which no movie version has yet successfully captured, not even Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That overwrought hyper-surrealistic version by Kenneth Brannagh captures the framework of the book in neat prologue/epilogue bookends, and Robert De Niro captures the menace and humanity of the creature, but Brannagh makes some boneheaded plot changes (particularly the handling of Henry and Elizabeth) that clank off the rim.

That said, though, it would be hard for any movie maker to capture this story which is told strictly in first person narrative, even when told through another's eyes or voice or pen. At one point, the narrative is retold with four layers between the reader and the actor. Good luck turning that into a movie.

And the basic conflict of the story still rings true, and is really what the book is about; unlike Brannagh, who dwells lovingly on the process, Shelley barely describes the creation of the creature, and wisely so. The focus is on the creature and its creator, not on the creative process. And as De Niro the creature says in the movie at a very dramatic turn, "I keep my promises". Frankenstein, the man and the creator, does not.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: great story
Comment: i read this book right after dracula and well, it's definitely a good read and an edge of your seat thriller. it has stood the test of time in terms of it's theme and lesson.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: I feel sorry...
Comment: for the people who hated this book and gave it poor reviews. Really missed out on what may be the greatest novel of all time. For me it's hard to put down. And the themes are deep and everlasting ones that humans will forever struggle with. Life and death, God vs science, good and evil, spiritual themes, and social ones also, all wrapped up in a GREAT story. Oh well, you can't expect everyone to get it and resonate with it.

One thing about this Rieger version: it says it "reproduces for the first time in more than a century the text of the first edition published in 1818". Not true. Donohue produced at least three editions (I have them) around 1895 that are all the 1818 text.
Just an FYI.

Believe the hype! This book is hard to surpass. I virtually never give 5 stars to ANYTHING. This deserves it.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Choose the 1818 version
Comment: Most editions of Mary Shelley's landmark book available today follow the heavily revised 1831 version. The impulse behind this trend is an honorable one (to present what is seemingly an author's "final revision"),but the 1818 version is preferable for many reasons. Looking back on her creation in later life, Shelley felt obliged to alter the book's focus in significant ways, adding what critic Marilyn Butler accurately describes as "long passages in which her main narrator, [Victor] Frankenstein, expresses religious remorse for making a creature..." The author sought to make the 1831 edition less controversial and thereby more palatable to the tastes of the reading public. The 1818 version is closer to Mary Shelley's original intentions, though it too, unfortunately, was filtered through the sensibilities of her husband, the poet Percy Shelley, who took many of his wife's rather straightforward passages and rendered them into his own more ornate and Ciceronian style. Still, the 1818 version remains more vital, more original, and less constrained by what the author believed would be acceptable to readers in 1830s England.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: You've seen Karloff, now read the original
Comment: Once you read Shelley's classic you're going to scratch your head and wonder: Is this really the book that gave us the Karloff movie? Not to mention Herman Munster and Frankenberry. For over a century and half people have been cannibalizing this book for ideas, movies, other books, and products of every size, shape and type that our modern concept of Frankenstein holds little to no resemblence to the master work. While occasionally these bastardizations have had enjoyable results, like Young Frankenstein, it's criminal that so few people are unfamiliar with the source. Do yourself a favor and find out where it all came from. It's not nearly as creepy as you may think, but it's infinitely more thought provoking and it certainly doesn't hurt that this version is beautifully published at a very reasonable price.

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