Weird but in a good way? It's tough for me to describe this one. Frankissstein retells the story of Frankenstein through a fictionalized re-enactment of Mary Shelley's life and modern day mad scientist Victor Stein.

It's equal parts sci-fi, comedy and philosophy. Such questions as "What is human consciousness?" "Do we even need a body if we preserve the mind?" permeate the novel. Questions about gender fluidity (does it matter what gender our bodies even are?), ageism, sexism make this a particularly relevant novel.

Overall I enjoyed this extremely creative take on an old classic. Thanks to NetGalley for providing an ARC fore review.

Full disclosure: I received a free Advanced Reader's Copy of this book in exchange for possibly writing a review.

In high school, I had a secret (or maybe not-so-secret) literary crush on Percy Shelley only equaled by Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was a little jealous of Mary Shelley because she actually got to love Percy in the flesh. Gothic fiction was my fave and still remains near and dear to my heart. I was completely stoked to see that Jeanette Winterson had written a book about Mary. If any modern day writer could do justice to gothic literature, it is Jeanette. Her writing is beautiful and haunting even when it isn't about a classic horror story, so this was perfect! Her treatment of Mary's story made me empathize with her. She may have had Percy's name, but she had to share him too.

The twist is the way the story is intertwined with modern day allowing humor to seep into an otherwise dark story. The modern storyline follows a transgender Shelley as they explore what it means to be human, alive, male, female, other.

Jeanette Winterson’s modern take on Mary Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> is an unusual blend of genres (literary fiction, science fiction, historical fiction). Winterson employs the familiar dual plot-line, one set in the early 1800’s and the other in contemporary times. The historical thread follows Mary Shelley’s life, starting at Lake Geneva, Switzerland, as she begins to create her famous work while married to poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and engaging in intellectual conversations with Lord Byron, his physician, Dr. Polidori, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire. The contemporary thread employs parallel characters: Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor, legally supplies body parts to Victor Stein, a scientist experimenting with cryonic reanimation and digitizing the contents of the human brain. They interact with Ron Lord, an entrepreneur in the sexbot industry, Claire, an evangelical Christian working as a guide and assistant, and Polly D, a pushy journalist in search of a story. The book opens with a technology conference, where Stein delivers a lecture on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, and Ron Lord engages in a darkly humorous regaling of the “benefits” of sexbots.

At times bizarre, and always inventive, I found this book intellectually stimulating, just thinking of all the implications of AI and how it could be used or abused. The historical storyline, a contemplative look at Mary Shelley’s life, appealed to me more than the contemporary, which read more like a fast-paced farce, complete with outlandish characters, exotic settings, and salacious humor. She uses humor to ridicule sexism, while not downplaying its destructiveness. She inserts social commentary via satire, and pokes fun at both the UK and US. While not required, a familiarity with the Shelley’s <i>Frankenstein</i> is helpful. It is interesting that many of the concerns of the 19th century are still relevant in the 21st: worker obsolescence through technological innovation (back then it was the loom), a woman’s place in the world, how to create a more equitable society, the mysteries of the soul, the drive for creativity, class divides, and what makes life worthwhile. I sensed the story losing a bit of its cohesion as it approaches the ending, which may be interpreted in a number of ways. Be aware that it includes a number of sexually explicit scenes, profuse profanity, and a potentially triggering scene of trans assault.

Winterson has produced an entertaining, occasionally disturbing, and thought-provoking work about the human experience. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book and plan to investigate the author’s other works.

I hesitated on whether to put this on my LGBT+ shelf because the representation in this book was questionable, to say the least. I have very mixed feelings on this book and from what I have seen when looking at other reviews, this is the case for a lot of other readers. So basically, I'm splitting my review.

The Mary Shelly parts- 3 ⭐.
The contemporary Sci-fi parts- 1 ⭐.
So the book gets 2 ⭐.

Winterson's writing hooked me from the beginning. The opening chapter and her portrayal of Mary Shelly's life were rich and it showcases some of her best writing to date. I would have loved for this novel to have been simplified and instead of half of it being about sex robots and sexuality (which is something I am not opposed too in theory), it could have been a focussed fictionalisation of the life and death of one of the greatest writers of our time. But sadly I was let down by the other half of the book and the way it impacted the primary narrative.
The transitions between scenes sometimes made it unclear who was talking and although I understand the intention of this it was not done well enough for the reader to be able to understand the larger narrative.
I won't spend too much time telling you the faults with Ry's narrative and the contemporary narrative as a whole. I will instead list trigger warnings for you in case you decide to read this.
⚠Trigger Warnings: Transphobia, Homophobia, Misgendering, Sexual Assult, Manipulative Relationships. ⚠
There may be more possible triggers than this so I implore you to read more reviews before you pick up this book. Although there are times when topics like these are handled with care. This is not one of them
Moreover, please seak out reviews from trans reviewers in order to read a more well-rounded perspective on the presentation of Ry. As a cisgender woman, I don't feel like it's my place to speak about this topic.

Overall, I found this book to be a letdown and I may not read Winterson's next release due to the presentation of these topics in this book and the shoddy characterisation of some of her major and minor characters.

I received this book as an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an Honest Review.

I can understand why people like this book. It has a dual narrative, part of which is set in the early 19th century around the famous party where Mary Shelley conceived of the Frankenstein narrative, and the other part is a modern reimagining that asks questions about AI that you can imagine Victor Frankenstein would have been really interested in.

Unfortunately, this book didn't really work for me. I think it lost me at the Sexpo where Ron, a sexbot salesman, is giving an extended explanation of all the options and functions that men could buy. The modern day part feels disconnected and all over the place. The speculation about the future and AI is, for me, a little dull.

This book was just weird and I didn't get very far into it. It started cool, talking first person from Mary Shelley, but then turned into a futuristic sex bot story? I'd be ok with it if it was intriguing but I was just confused.

A wonderful , thought provoking,inspiring and thoroughly modern re-interpretation of one of my favourite books , Frankenstein, Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein is a delight. The book opens in 1816, on the shores of Lake Geneva and introduces us to Mary Shelley and to the origins of her masterpiece . At various intervals throughout the book we return to Mary and her companions, and the tragic story of her life is laid bare for the reader with devastating simplicity. In sharp contrast to these historical interludes we have a very modern story set in the not too distant future. Ry Shelly is a non-binary transgender doctor who we first meet at an exhibition on the future of AI and robotics where one of the key speakers is brilliant scientist Victor Stein, Also in attendance are sex-bot magnate Ron Lord , Vanity Fair reporter Polly D and undercover Christian activist Claire, and the interplay between these very different characters makes for intriguing and at times humorous reading. While Ry and Dr Stein and trying to better understand the attraction between them, and what it means in terms of their perceptions of self and sexuality , they are also involved in a dubious enterprise involving body parts and robotic and AI controlled prostheses. Like it's inspiration this book is not lacking in social commentary, issues such as gender, misogyny, the role of women in society and the benefits and risks of scientific advancement are skillfully woven into the narrative, and it was interesting to see the discussion of "man as God" which is at the heart of the original novel , taken to the modern age in a disturbingly realistic way.
This book is a richly stitched tapestry of many parts, each beautiful in their own way and interesting in their own right, and while it may not be for everyone, I enjoyed it enormously and found myself thinking about it and some of the questions it posed long after I turned the last page.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

From body politics to AI to Brexit to patriarchy to freak scientists with a heinous urge and devices need to prolong life on earth, Jeanette Winterson's Frankissstein tackles a whole array of topics in a riotously funny and delightful page-turner of a book. It's a quirky tale that runs on two timelines - present day and the early 1800s when Shelly and Byron were alive - featuring part-imagined, part-real life story of Mary Shelly but refrains from introducing time travel as a narrative device. Winterson's masterful prose and clever character portrayal (especially of the lead character Ry, the transgender doctor), interspersed with cultural commentary carry the sci-fi-isque book successfully to finish line. Sample this: "Jews were not popular in England at that time. The English are serial racists - one group gets accepted, another group becomes the scapegoat." Oops! Fingers crossed for the book's booker shortlist and a possible win!

I feel a sense of satisfaction having finished this book. I loved it, and I can really see why it has made the Booker Prize longlist (2019).
It is set in two different timelines. The first begins in 1816 with Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley (actually, before they were married), Lord Byron, Mary’s stepsister and Byron’s lover, Claire Clairmont and Polidori, Byron’s doctor. During a particularly wet two weeks on Lake Geneva, Byron sets them all the task of writing a horror story. And so Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is born.

In the modern day, we follow Ry Shelley, a transgender doctor, Victor Stein (a ‘mad’ scientist), Ron Lord (a very successful sexbot producer), Clare (a staunch Christian, who seems to be working undercover in the most unlikely places!) and Polly Dory (a journalist for Vanity Fair. Do you see what she did here? It took me a couple of ‘chapters’, sadly! This is the Frankenstein of the modern age. Where Mary Shelley was terrified at the idea of creating a living man from parts of the dead, Victor Stein in the present day wants to preserve the brains and thoughts of the dead - and it’s equally terrifying.

Mary Shelley and Ry Shelley are very similar (the same, but in different times?) characters, even though they are in two very different times. Mary is at the mercy of her female body - she falls pregnant and loses two babies before she has the third who survives. Ry is trying to change his body from female to male so that he has control over it. But society has very fixed ideas about these characters in both timelines.

It’s a very current book with mention of Brexit and Trump, but I think it will hold up well in the future because it is so well written, and it has a lot to say about society and gender.
I thoroughly enjoyed it - and now I’m going to go and find more books in Jeanette Wintersons back catalogue!

Many thanks to Penguin Random House/ Jonathan Cape and NetGalley for a copy of this book (which I actually went and bought as well - it needs to be sat on my bookshelf!)

Despite this being longlisted for this year’s Booker, I might have given Winterson’s latest a pass had it not been for several people whose opinions I trust calling this “a return to form.” My relationship with Winterson’s work is both perfect and harried; during my undergraduate days, I spent a lot of time with her work, and her work from the 1990s through the early-2000s is very strong, ground-breaking, and original.



But after The PowerBook, Winterson’s work started to become derivative; I even attended three or four of her lectures, and she returned again and again to the same anecdotes and stories in the talks—likely as these were the ones that earned some guffaws. After the masterpiece that is Art & Lies, can any author surpass their own best creation?

And this is something like the main conceit in Frankissstein: the question of artificial intelligence; how wedded is our consciousness to our brains; is artistic creation the same as, or at least akin to, scientific inventions; how do the bodies we inhabit—and which change both with time and with our wills (made emphatic by one of the main characters, Ry, whose trans body is much on display and much discussed in the novel)—problematize things like being, consciousness, and desire if the promise or threat of AI is on the horizon?

I began the novel with high hopes: the early sections, told from Mary Shelley’s point-of-view, detail the genesis of Frankenstein and the conversations about gender, authorship, artistic creations, and also vivisection were some of the more interesting sections here. Given that two of Winterson’s strongest novels, The Passion and Sexing the Cherry, are historical and tackle these same questions seemed to bode well. However, the present-day sections are riddled with cliches and stereotypes, e.g., the African American woman who checks Ry into the AI conference in Memphis; Ry’s own trans body, which, as a cisgendered person, even I took some issues with: it will be interesting to see what trans readers make of Winterson’s depiction of Ry as something like the promise of the future, the making of the new self—something she pairs very haphazardly with AI.

The sections with Mary Shelley—and those of her meeting her own fictional creation in Bedlam—being the strongest, the present-day sections (dealing with sexbots and trans bodies and lots of fucking and the question of whether a disembodied brain can still house consciousness and intelligence) are a mess: Winterson fails to join them, even though one can see that the underlying themes with which Shelley grapples and with which Ry and Dr. Victor Shelley grapple in today’s Manchester are indeed united. Winterson chooses to join them by poetic repetition and the use of literary quotes—one of which is her own—and this feels more like a patchwork quilt of a book than a novel.

Still, this was a fun read overall, and I would recommend it; however, I would in no way recommend that readers new to Winterson begin here. This is an author definitely back on track after more than a decade off the mark, but Frankissstein fails to deliver a convincing narrative, despite its topical questions, and instead reads like two very different novels that have been joined together in places where they seem to “fit.” 



With thanks to Netgalley for an ARC of this in exchange for my honest thoughts. 



3.5 stars

Disclaimer: like most classics, Shelley’s Frankenstein is a novel I own but have not read. Will I ever? Maybe. Depends on if science can figure out how to cheat death! So no.

Having zero Frankenstein knowledge—ugh, and I have an English lit degree, can you believe it—I’m unsure if reading it would deepen my understanding of Frankissstein, but I like to think that I’ve gotten just as much out of it as anyone else. (Haha of course I didn’t!)

I enjoyed Mary’s and Ry’s stories equally. Both presented interesting ideas about time, love, and death. There’s some big scientific concepts here that I think Winterson nicely summed up without getting too technical, and I appreciate that, because, again, English lit brain. Although several of the characters felt a bit too one-note for me, that kinda made them more realistic which is obviously very disturbing.

At first I didn’t think the connections between the two timelines necessarily had anything to do the novel’s theme, but the more I consider the ending (which threw me for a loop initially) maybe this wasn’t about transcending our physical forms at all but more about overcoming the limitations of our bodies? Or maybe that AI isn’t the future, but the past? Er, but that the past and future is the same thing, which is different from the present…? Something something brain mapping?

Look, I don’t know, I’m not a scientist; I just like pretty words. And Winterson always, always delivers on the prose front.

Lots to chew on here, scientifically and socially and ethically. This is a good candidate for the Booker prize, and I’d like to see it advance to the shortlist. It’s what Winterson deserves!

Partly fascinating but off the mark.

Does this book try to be too much or to do too much? I was excited to read another Winterson book but parts of this seemed so contrived and vulgar. Deep descriptions of sex dolls, their uses and business models definitely wasn't what I was expecting.

Bold and audacious in conception, masterful in execution, Winterson's novel never ceases to intrigue and mystify, in startling prose that it is an absolute pleasure to read. My only previous exposure to the author was her contribution to the modern Hogarth Shakespeare, and while I enjoyed her 'Winter's Tale' adaptation, The Gap of Time, it didn't quite prepare me for the depth of her abilities demonstrated here.

I must admit to a certain ongoing fascination with Mary Shelley and her own masterwork, having seen three different film adaptations about the 'Haunted Summer' when she wrote Frankenstein (along with that 1988 title, Ken Russell's bonkers 1996 version, 'Gothic', as well as the recent 'Mary Shelley', which I actually watched mid-read). But Winterson's conflation of reanimated corpses with modern day cryogenics and AI is wonderfully realized, intellectually stimulating, yet accessible. [Side note: for those disgruntled that Ian McEwan's similarly themed Machines Like Me didn't get a Booker nod and this did - sorry, but this is far and away the more accomplished tome.]

Only ranking slightly below The Man Who Saw Everything of the seven novels on the Booker longlist I've read so far, I certainly hope this makes the shortlist also, and wouldn't be terribly upset if it took the prize.

My sincere thanks to both Netgalley and Grove Atlantic/Grove Press for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.

I’m not quite a “Bookerhead”—I won’t read all the titles on the longlist this year—but I find the list fascinating.
And I do have a copy of one of the novels, Jeanette Winterson’s "Frankissstein," a strange, brilliant retelling of Mary Shelley’s "Frankenstein."  As always, Winterson writes gracefully, and in this novel she philosophically and scientifically explores the future of AI. 

It begins like a historical novel.  In the opening chapter, during inclement weather, Mary, with her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, their friend Lord Byron, her stepsister, and an obnoxious horny doctor, John Polidori, compete to see who can write the best ghost /horror story. Shelley's "Frankenstein" is the winning result.

Winterson interweaves  the story of Mary Shelley with an intellectual present-day first-person narrative by Ry Shelley, an English transgender man. In the present, Ry (short for Mary, not Ryan), a doctor and journalist, is interested in the ethical issues of AI.  He has a relationship with Victor Frankisstein, a charming but ruthless AI enthusiast who gives TED talks and hopes to upload his brain into some AI form. (Neal Stephenson also writes about this issue in his new novel, "Fall, or Dodge in Hell".)

But Ry's interest in AI goes beyond science. He is also curious about the quotidian future of AI. At a conference
as a journalist, he interviews Ron Lord, a working-class manufacturer of sexbots: Ron even hopes to make a deal with a rental car service, which will provide bots in the passenger seat. His pride in his dolls is comical but horrifying.

Women see these issues very differently from men. They express concerns at one of Victor's AI promotional lectures that the future of AI may lower the status of women. It doesn't help that Ron Lord is now one of Victor's investors. A female Vanity Fair writer is is very indignant.  She says to Ry, "I don’t trust the way AI is being sold to us. People aren’t in the conversation, let alone the decisions. We’re going to wake up one morning and the world won’t be the same."

Though not a fan of Alexa and Siri,  I had never considered the effect of AI on the future of women.  The award-winning Winterson combines lyricism with geek talk in this genre-bending literary-philosophical SF novel.

Frankenstein reanimated

Part fictionalised life story of Mary Shelley, part bonkers ‘mad scientist’ caper set in the five-minutes-from-now future, Frankissstein is riotously funny, philosophically rich, and one-of-a-kind.

Lake Geneva, 1816. 18-year-old Mary Shelley, her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley, Lord Byron, John Polidori and Clair Clairmont are holed up during a storm. They pass the time with ghost stories and talk of galvanism, consciousness, and loom-smashing Luddites, as Shelley begins writing her famous Frankenstein. We then follow Shelley’s life in pensive, beautifully drawn chapters that would make for a stunning historical fiction novel on their own.

The future/now. Transgender, non-binary doctor Ry Shelley, charismatic scientist Victor Stein, sexbot magnate Ron Lord (Lord By-Ron, get it?), journalist Polly D and religious evangelist Claire are caught up in a madcap plot involving cryonics and stolen body parts. It’s a dizzying ride, with some characters prone to crude sex jokes while others are more likely to lapse into philosophical debates on transhumanism.

Humour will always be hit-or-miss, particularly when the gags are as ribald and dorky as they are here. Whether or not it happens to tickle your funny bone will probably be the difference between finding Frankissstein enormous fun… or just silly.

Winterson shrewdly draws the parallels between Mary Shelley’s time and our own: the disruption of the Industrial Revolution equating with today’s anxieties over automation; the potential for AI to actualise what Shelley envisaged – autonomous, thinking artificial life. Cryonics also features in the plot but isn’t afforded much seriousness. To me that makes sense, because right now it’s the AI that really frightens us: our 21st century monsters are stitched together from zeroes and ones.

Clever, funny and more than a little nutty, Frankissstein is hugely entertaining and just right for right now. 4.5 stars

Another feverish classic from Winterson, who again blends gothic tension, gender and identity and love into a seamless dream of Frankenstein.
What better metaphor for transformation? Winterson hops back and forth between Mary Shelley and her love of both her husband and the desire to metamorphosise into a sum greater than its parts, and Ry, the trans muse of a modern day Stein who flirts with the dual natures of Ry and what trans means for a scientist bent on leaving the body behind.
I devoured it in one sitting and can't recommend it enough.

3.5 rounded up

I'm pleased to report that my first experience of Winterson's fiction was a good one. A playful modern day adaptation of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which is interspersed with narration by Mary Shelley herself over a week spent with Lord Byron and her husband on Lake Geneva in 1816.

While I enjoyed the Shelley thread it was the present day narrative that kept me engaged - here we follow Ry, born Mary and using masculine pronouns and working alongside Victor Stein, a guy who is working on downloading people's minds so they can be revived in the future when the technology permits and reanimating frozen heads. They encounter Ron Lord, a sleazy guy who produces sex robots. The conversations with Ron are really quite funny and their discussions made for thought provoking reading on the future of humans and AI. Recommended!

More a novel of ideas than a plot-driven story that touches on a wide variety of subjects: poetry and art, robotics, artificial intelligence and cryonics. Told in a dual timeline - one set in 1818 with Mary Shelley creating her famous 'modern Prometheus' and one in the present with scientist Victor Stein as the modern incarnation of Frankenstein - the book swirls towards an apocalyptic climax. Baffling!

Jeanette Winterson presents a re-telling of Frankenstein that is a must read anytime of the year. The origin story of Mary Shelley’s novel opens Winterson’s tale. The author herself narrates a take on the weekend she spent with her husband on Lake Geneva in 1816, hosted by Lord Byron and challenged to write a scary tell. The original text is interspersed throughout the novel and the creation storyline sits beside a modern take. Ry Shelley, narrates a parallel contemporary tale. Ry, born Mary but preferring a masculine pronoun, stands in for both the author and the monster. Ry works for a cryogenics firm and meets Victor Stein, a doctor interested in using Artificial Intelligence to download people’s minds for safe-keeping looking toward the day they can be revived once biology and technology allow. Add in a proselytizing Christian infiltrating the cryogenics lab only to answer existential questions about the soul. This unlikely trio is joined by perhaps the most entertaining character of the entire novel, Ron Lord, the puddle-deep CEO of a company that produces lifelike sex bots. The novel is certainly wry and quirky, but in typical Winterson fashion, highlights the fundamental questions of mankind about identity, life and the spark of human-ness, that are still as enigmatic now as they were in Mary Shelley’s day.

Let’s start at the very beginning – the title. Why? A play on words, presumably, but one which only leads to spelling mistakes. The whole novel is “playful”, even though it deals with serious and important issues, but that playful element left me cold and I remained unamused. There are two storylines, the first being set in 1816 as the young Mary Shelley, haunted by the deaths of her small children, begins to write her famous novel Frankenstein, an exploration of a creature made from body parts brought to life by electricity. I enjoyed this part of the novel. In part two, set in the present, we have a trans doctor, called Ry Shelley (that’s Mary/Ryan) who becomes involved with Victor Stein, a scientist attempting to reanimate a frozen head. The parallels are all too obvious and I’m not sure Winterson brings anything new to the table. Cryogenics, AI, sex-bots, what it means to be human, transhumanism, gender fluidity and so on and so on, all woven together, sometimes clumsily, into a less than satisfactory whole. I found the trans episodes embarrassing, and unconvincing, and they appeared to be there almost solely as an excuse for some excruciating sex scenes. There’s a lot of emphasis on genitalia – aren’t we supposed to be beyond that by now? Many of the characters seem to be there merely to exemplify a point of view and all are caricatures. The threat or promise of cryogenics and the possibility of consciousness being preserved beyond death are indeed issues we may well have to deal with in the future, but this book doesn’t serve them well. It all seemed very trivial to me. For example, Ry seems to have access to various body parts to take to Stein – there are advantages to working in A&E, she comments. Really? There are also some surreal episodes – Stein has some reanimated hands wandering around. Is that supposed to reassure or horrify us about the prospect of reanimation? The book seemed to me to be an uncomfortable mix of farce, satire and serious exploration, without ever really deciding what was the most important element, and I remained unengaged and somewhat bewildered throughout.