"Frankenstein"

     When one reads Frankenstein, one can't help but thinking, "My goodness, this sounds like it was written by an 18 year old girl!".  Well, good sir or madam, that is because it indeed was written by an 18 year old girl.  In fact, it was an 18 year old girl with almost no practice as a writer.  Mary Shelley's only claim to being a talented writer is that she is the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft - renowned philosopher and feminist writer.

     The reason this was ever written was because Shelley was spending a summer with her husband and several of their poet friends in a house on a lake.  One stormy evening, they all decided that they should have a contest (as crazy writers do) to see who could write the scariest story.  Ironically enough, Shelley won; this event remains a mystery to literary experts.
     The story itself is a story within a story.  It starts with the logs of a captain on his ship at sea.  From there it tells the story told by a man they found lost at sea.  Most of us are very much aware of the general story of Frankenstein; but are we all aware that most of the novel is actually just descriptions of the mountains, and they sky, and the grass, and nature in general.  It is truly the transcendentalist manifesto.
     But if you can detangle yourself from the descriptions and all of the adjectives, then you can finally see that there is somewhat of a plot thrown in there.  While the idea of bringing a man back to life sounds interesting enough, it is not nearly as much in Shelley's novel.  
     Had Shelley perhaps spent more time working on plot than on nature-related descriptions she might actually have had a really good book on her hands.  No one said classics had to be good.

I give it 2 out of 5 Wildes.