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5.0
‘The monster once made cannot be unmade. What will happen to the world has begun’
There is a certain spark that catches fire within me whenever I start a Jeanette Winterson novel, her prose immediately transporting me into her realm of wild logic and zany brilliance that I’ve come to find so intoxicating. It’s like when I was a child and the LucasFilm logo would come up on the theater screen, shooting a chill and thrill through my body because I knew what was imminent, or that feeling when the roller coaster crests the first drop—the feeling of Here. We. Go. And what a wild ride Frankissstein: A Love Story is as Winterson creates with a patchwork of past—reanimating the story of [a:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|11139|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1699348762p2/11139.jpg] as she writes Frankenstein and all its lessons within&with the ‘future/now’ of AI, transgender and transhuman and brings them to life with her special shock of prose and plot styling. Frankissstein is endlessly playful and humorous and Winterson excels at making everything fluid from the prose to genders and the timeline of the novel where one moment you are in the Swiss Alps in 1816 and then next traversing subterranean tunnels with severed hands crawling like spiders. While both a paean to the past and warning to the future, Frankissstein is a love story at heart, between lovers, of humanity, of progress and all the terrors it may bring, and of creator and creations.
‘Why is it that we wish to leave some mark behind? said Byron. Is it only vanity?
No, I said, it is hope. Hope that one day there will be a human society that is just.’
I had been intending to keep reading Winterson from oldest to most recent but after having, quite by coincidence, made my summer reading full of queer mosters stories (Our Wives Under the Sea and Carmilla), it felt only right to see how my now-favorite author would approach the genre. As always: brilliantly and unconventionally. The narrative here rotates between Mary Shelley during the summer retreat with [a:Lord Byron|44407|Lord Byron|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1568147647p2/44407.jpg], [a:John William Polidori|26932|John William Polidori|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206804357p2/26932.jpg], her soon-to-be-husband [a:Percy Bysshe Shelley|45882|Percy Bysshe Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1212686605p2/45882.jpg] and half-sister Claire that inspired Frankenstein and Ry (from Mary), a trans doctor set in the ‘future/now’. Winterson has a knack for weighting a novel in historical fiction while sashaying across a timeline, creating a wonderful juxtaposition between the ideas of Mary Shelley and company with the modern anxieties of AI as well as the themes from the source material of Frankenstein with Winterson’s own themes and theories in Frankissstein. In this way we see the catalyst for the Peterloo massacre contextualized alongside Brexit, offering an abstract commentary on recurring themes of history through their adjacencies. Mary’s comments in 1816, in this way, function just as well as a commentary on the present:
They say the past is a foreign country but in Winterson’s hands it is also a borderless one, the past, present and future folded together into the quagmire of history and Ideas. ‘The opposite of the past is the present,’ says Victor, ‘anyone can live in a past that is gone or a future that does not exist. The opposite of either position is the present,’ and in this way we see past and present as two sides of the same whole, as if simultaneously in the narrative. The effect also grants a more dynamic aspect to the seemingly recurring characters (Ry Shelley, Victor Stein, or Lord Byron/Ron Lord) making them more expressions of their themes and a multifaceted idea with constant energy from creator/creation chasing one another across history. ‘My mind idled around the difference between desire for life without end and desire for more than one life, that is, more than one life, but lived simultaneously,’ thinks Ry, positioning it as akin to the dual lives across time in Sexing the Cherry and allowing for a greater nuance of character as they wrestle with themes throughout time unrestrained from one-to-one comparisons.
‘Like Victor Frankenstein’s, our digital creations depend on electricity – but not on the rotting discards of the graveyard. Our new intelligence – embodied or non-embodied – is built out of the zeros and ones of code.’
-Jeanette Winterson, [b:12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|58527285|12 Bytes How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625925240l/58527285._SY75_.jpg|86107455]
In an interview with Literary Hub, Winterson discusses ‘the corporatization of everything,’ and how that has, with AI, come to even have influence over the way we love one another, a major theme of the book. ‘I am not at all anti-tech,’ she says, ‘but we really can’t leave this stuff to socially stunted white boys and corporate greed,’ which is at the root of several ethical quandaries in Frankissstein. Namely, if AI learns from us, what reflection of our society will it give with concerns of racial and gender bias and will this further harm marginalized people with the novel taking a special focus on trans and non-binary people (which is a modern twist to Shelley’s Frankenstein about how lack of paternal care caused the creation to become monstrous and we, people, might be the true monsters). This has long been a concern, and, as [a:Caroline Criado Pérez|19637490|Caroline Criado Pérez|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1587321855p2/19637490.jpg] discusses in her book [b:Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men|41104077|Invisible Women Data Bias in a World Designed for Men|Caroline Criado Pérez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617113740l/41104077._SY75_.jpg|64218580], in virtually every aspect of life ‘ we continue to rely on data from studies done on men as if they apply to women.’ She demonstrates how this appears everywhere for the medical field, car safety design, urban planning and even standard hand size for tools. Winterson asks us to consider how this will show up in AI, especially considering it is a known issue such as when a 2020 report found that 90% of companies have faced at least one instance of ethical issues due to AI systems, with 60% of these involving legal scrutiny. ‘He is not human, yet the sum of all he has learned is from humankind.’ Shelley writes, a message that applies to both Frankenstein’s monster and the machine learning of AI.
The biases learned from the data is something UCLA professor [a:Safiya Umoja Noble|14532650|Safiya Umoja Noble|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534004371p2/14532650.jpg] terms in her book [b:Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism|34762552|Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism|Safiya Umoja Noble|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492944248l/34762552._SX50_.jpg|55962260] as ‘technological redlining’ which is ‘embedded in computer code and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence technologies that we are reliant on, by choice or not.’ She shares Winterson’s concern that ‘where men shape technology, they shape it to the exclusion of women, especially Black women.’ With Silicon Valley having a large gender gap as well as a notable issues of rampant misogyny and sexual harassment, this seems a valid worry, on that is voiced by several characters in Frankissstein, most notably Vanity Fare journalist Polly D who ask ‘will women be the first casualties of obsolescence in your brave new world?’ This eventually seeps into a criticism of cis liberals and the way they fetishize trans ideology for argumentative points as well as gatekeep gender performance, but more on that later.
One of the more humorous aspects of the novel is Ron Lord’s sex-bot industry—which at all time risk waking up and moaning ‘daddy’ at inopportune times in the novel—but also soft pitches the first ethical queries about creating, AI and how technological advances will alter the way we love and interact. Ron sees sex-bots as freedom and a way to empower men, while others worry it is another way that ‘men subjugate women.’ In her non-fiction work [b:12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|58527285|12 Bytes How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625925240l/58527285._SY75_.jpg|86107455], which feels like the essay version extension of this novel, Winterson explores this at length in the essay Hot for a Bot. She contrasts notable Chinese feminist Xiao Meili who argues that ‘men will always have outdated expectations, and ‘sex housewife robots’ might actually help women’ with Dr Kathleen Richardson, who founded the Campaign Against Sex Robots in 2015, and ‘is concerned that sex robots reinforce stereotypes, encourage the objectification and commercialisation of women’s bodies and increase violence towards women’ (Ron mentions clients smashing or maiming the heads of his sex-bots is a common problem).
I enjoyed the characterization of Ron as a stereotypical ‘tech bro’, yet in many ways he becomes a rather endearing character and seeing him at least try (though mostly failing) to understand the arguments, particularly around transgender and transhuman issues. ‘Doll-world likes to paint itself as a daring challenge to convention,’ writes Winterson, ‘in reality, doll-world reinforces the gender at its most oppressive and unimaginative.’ There is certainly something to ponder about the way the dolls are ‘made to look like the male-gaze stereotype,’ and programed to be submissive and get off on abuse will do to human relationships, something Frankissstein approaches with humor tinged with horror.
‘All our faults, vanities, idiocies, prejudices, cruelty. Do you really want augmented humans, superhumans, uploaded humans, forever humans, with all the shit that comes with us?’
Winterson plumbs the depths of the creator/creation ideas from Frankenstein in multiple ways here, with Victor Stein pushing boundaries in the whole ‘playing God’ idea as he hopes to resurrect dead organs and even map the brain to upload consciousness for digital and eternal life. There is some great stuff here when present-day Claire, the anti-robot, ultra-Christian unexpectedly joins forces with Ron Lord because she wants to see if the soul will return to the self upon reanimation. Even Mary Shelley must confront a literal flesh-and-blood Victor Frankenstein in a sanitorium, only to find the motif of herself chasing him through all of history as he chases his creation. Winterson World is wild and I love it. We are even treated to real-life I. J. Good’s head preserved in a jar awaiting Victor Stein to ‘steal life from the gods. At what cost?’
‘And what if we are the story we invent?’
The digital or reanimated self, as well as tech-implant in the novel quickly juxtapose issues of transhumanism and transgender questions that make up for some of the most interesting aspects of the novel. Through Ry, a trans man, we see Winterson address the hypocrisy of tech-bros who preach of digital consciousness while still reacting violently (as a misogynistic policing for the patriarchy, as Dr. [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1689357239p2/16600238.jpg] would put it) or squeamishly to trans people. Men here gender robots they have sex with can’t call Ry by his correct pronouns. When Ron questions how digital existence will change online dating, Ry comments that it would be like old correspondence, all consciousness without the body: ‘there would be no straight, gay, male, female, cis, trans. What happens to labels when there is no biology?’
Winterson steps us through multiple examples of reinventing or rebuilding oneself but then questions why being the gender one identifies with is crossing the line for some. Mary’s half-sister changes her name, for example (‘I did not disapprove of this. Why should she not remake herself? What is identity but what we name it? Jane/Claire’) and Mary considers the story of Pygmalion marrying a statue that he brings to life and then becomes a woman—’a double transformation from lifeless to life and from male to female.’—or the statue of Hermoine that comes to life in Shakespeare’s [b:The Winter's Tale|44133|The Winter's Tale|William Shakespeare|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327893509l/44133._SX50_.jpg|6302847] (which Winterson reimagined in [b:The Gap of Time|24727420|The Gap of Time|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438620932l/24727420._SY75_.jpg|44353880]). Naming is important, Winterson writes, as is using correct pronouns lest we Other people. As [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1686463588p2/957894.jpg] said ‘to name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world,’ such as how calling Frankenstein’s creation a monster drove him into violent isolation.
Ry faces a lot of resistance and fetishizing for being trans (particularly from Vic who is a stereotypical “ally” that amounts mostly to fetishization, you know, they type that will argue that someone isn’t performing identify enough to meet their standards of how trans identity can be discussed) and asks ‘if the body is provisional, interchangeable, even, why does it matter so much what I am?’ Even Victor seems to view Ry mostly as a curiosity, attracted to him as someone who reinvented himself but trips up when Ry asks if he had a penis would Victor still be attracted. Victor, who thinks consciousness and the human body are separate and the former will live without the confines of the latter in his future. Winterson has said ‘‘gender identity is more fluid,’ and grappled with that in extraordinary fashion in Written on the Body which features a narrator with no gender identifies, and it is interesting to see this explored in context of digital futures. There is a sexual assault scene, reminding us that trans people face extreme aggression and violence to the extent that the Human Rights Campaign declared it an epidemic. This is just all very interesting to see addressed in a modern sci-fi novel like this, building on themes Winterson has approached since the 80s.
‘This is a love story’
As with most Winterson, an examination of love is at the heart of this book. And is always written about in such gorgeous prose and phrasing. Take for example Victor’s speech here (there is, to be fair, a lot of soliloquizing in this book):
This perfectly addresses the theme of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein across time and is rather cute. So is Victor’s constant return to Baye’s theorem telling Ry his presence is new data that alters the outcome. Scientists sure know how to flirt in Winterson World. If I have one criticism of the novel, it is that occasionally the dialogue reads a bit off or forced, though these are characters that are oddballs in society so maybe it works? Whenever there is a clunky moment in the novel it is also Winterson experimenting and I give it grace for at least trying new things. I do enjoy how Winterson has an uncanny pulse on modern day tech and language though, and when Mary responds in all caps ‘THIS IS THE MOST PROFOUND THING THAT CLAIRE HAS SAID IN HER LIFE,’ the folding of past and present makes it read in current twitter voice that makes you !!!! and is just funny. Winterson even makes quoting The Eagles sound brainy.
‘This is madness, I said. What is sanity? he said. Can you tell me? Poverty, disease, global warming, terrorism, despotism, nuclear weapons, gross inequality, misogyny, hatred of the stranger.’
Frankissstein is a bold, brash and brilliant novel that takes you through corkscrews of ideas Winterson continues to astonish me and I have to admit it was also the most fun I’ve had with a book lately. I really enjoying doing outside reading on the topics, such as how Lord Byron was a prick. The Mary scenes are extraordinary, I could have read a book of just that. This is a fun book, though those looking for an entry point might want to start with her earlier work, and while having read the source material was nice, it is not necessary. That said, Winterson reanimates Frankenstein here for a further examination of it’s themes coupled with a modern landscape of technology and ethics for a wild ride of a book you won’t soon forget.
4.5/5
‘Humans: so many good ideas. So many failed ideals.'
There is a certain spark that catches fire within me whenever I start a Jeanette Winterson novel, her prose immediately transporting me into her realm of wild logic and zany brilliance that I’ve come to find so intoxicating. It’s like when I was a child and the LucasFilm logo would come up on the theater screen, shooting a chill and thrill through my body because I knew what was imminent, or that feeling when the roller coaster crests the first drop—the feeling of Here. We. Go. And what a wild ride Frankissstein: A Love Story is as Winterson creates with a patchwork of past—reanimating the story of [a:Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|11139|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1699348762p2/11139.jpg] as she writes Frankenstein and all its lessons within&with the ‘future/now’ of AI, transgender and transhuman and brings them to life with her special shock of prose and plot styling. Frankissstein is endlessly playful and humorous and Winterson excels at making everything fluid from the prose to genders and the timeline of the novel where one moment you are in the Swiss Alps in 1816 and then next traversing subterranean tunnels with severed hands crawling like spiders. While both a paean to the past and warning to the future, Frankissstein is a love story at heart, between lovers, of humanity, of progress and all the terrors it may bring, and of creator and creations.
‘Why is it that we wish to leave some mark behind? said Byron. Is it only vanity?
No, I said, it is hope. Hope that one day there will be a human society that is just.’
I had been intending to keep reading Winterson from oldest to most recent but after having, quite by coincidence, made my summer reading full of queer mosters stories (Our Wives Under the Sea and Carmilla), it felt only right to see how my now-favorite author would approach the genre. As always: brilliantly and unconventionally. The narrative here rotates between Mary Shelley during the summer retreat with [a:Lord Byron|44407|Lord Byron|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1568147647p2/44407.jpg], [a:John William Polidori|26932|John William Polidori|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1206804357p2/26932.jpg], her soon-to-be-husband [a:Percy Bysshe Shelley|45882|Percy Bysshe Shelley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1212686605p2/45882.jpg] and half-sister Claire that inspired Frankenstein and Ry (from Mary), a trans doctor set in the ‘future/now’. Winterson has a knack for weighting a novel in historical fiction while sashaying across a timeline, creating a wonderful juxtaposition between the ideas of Mary Shelley and company with the modern anxieties of AI as well as the themes from the source material of Frankenstein with Winterson’s own themes and theories in Frankissstein. In this way we see the catalyst for the Peterloo massacre contextualized alongside Brexit, offering an abstract commentary on recurring themes of history through their adjacencies. Mary’s comments in 1816, in this way, function just as well as a commentary on the present:
‘ saw that the wretched creatures enslaved to the machines were as repetitive in their movements as machines. They were distinguished only by their unhappiness. The great wealth of the manufactories is not for the workers but for the owners. Humans must live in misery to be the mind of the machines.’
They say the past is a foreign country but in Winterson’s hands it is also a borderless one, the past, present and future folded together into the quagmire of history and Ideas. ‘The opposite of the past is the present,’ says Victor, ‘anyone can live in a past that is gone or a future that does not exist. The opposite of either position is the present,’ and in this way we see past and present as two sides of the same whole, as if simultaneously in the narrative. The effect also grants a more dynamic aspect to the seemingly recurring characters (Ry Shelley, Victor Stein, or Lord Byron/Ron Lord) making them more expressions of their themes and a multifaceted idea with constant energy from creator/creation chasing one another across history. ‘My mind idled around the difference between desire for life without end and desire for more than one life, that is, more than one life, but lived simultaneously,’ thinks Ry, positioning it as akin to the dual lives across time in Sexing the Cherry and allowing for a greater nuance of character as they wrestle with themes throughout time unrestrained from one-to-one comparisons.
‘Like Victor Frankenstein’s, our digital creations depend on electricity – but not on the rotting discards of the graveyard. Our new intelligence – embodied or non-embodied – is built out of the zeros and ones of code.’
-Jeanette Winterson, [b:12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|58527285|12 Bytes How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625925240l/58527285._SY75_.jpg|86107455]
In an interview with Literary Hub, Winterson discusses ‘the corporatization of everything,’ and how that has, with AI, come to even have influence over the way we love one another, a major theme of the book. ‘I am not at all anti-tech,’ she says, ‘but we really can’t leave this stuff to socially stunted white boys and corporate greed,’ which is at the root of several ethical quandaries in Frankissstein. Namely, if AI learns from us, what reflection of our society will it give with concerns of racial and gender bias and will this further harm marginalized people with the novel taking a special focus on trans and non-binary people (which is a modern twist to Shelley’s Frankenstein about how lack of paternal care caused the creation to become monstrous and we, people, might be the true monsters). This has long been a concern, and, as [a:Caroline Criado Pérez|19637490|Caroline Criado Pérez|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1587321855p2/19637490.jpg] discusses in her book [b:Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men|41104077|Invisible Women Data Bias in a World Designed for Men|Caroline Criado Pérez|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1617113740l/41104077._SY75_.jpg|64218580], in virtually every aspect of life ‘ we continue to rely on data from studies done on men as if they apply to women.’ She demonstrates how this appears everywhere for the medical field, car safety design, urban planning and even standard hand size for tools. Winterson asks us to consider how this will show up in AI, especially considering it is a known issue such as when a 2020 report found that 90% of companies have faced at least one instance of ethical issues due to AI systems, with 60% of these involving legal scrutiny. ‘He is not human, yet the sum of all he has learned is from humankind.’ Shelley writes, a message that applies to both Frankenstein’s monster and the machine learning of AI.
The biases learned from the data is something UCLA professor [a:Safiya Umoja Noble|14532650|Safiya Umoja Noble|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1534004371p2/14532650.jpg] terms in her book [b:Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism|34762552|Algorithms of Oppression How Search Engines Reinforce Racism|Safiya Umoja Noble|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1492944248l/34762552._SX50_.jpg|55962260] as ‘technological redlining’ which is ‘embedded in computer code and, increasingly, in artificial intelligence technologies that we are reliant on, by choice or not.’ She shares Winterson’s concern that ‘where men shape technology, they shape it to the exclusion of women, especially Black women.’ With Silicon Valley having a large gender gap as well as a notable issues of rampant misogyny and sexual harassment, this seems a valid worry, on that is voiced by several characters in Frankissstein, most notably Vanity Fare journalist Polly D who ask ‘will women be the first casualties of obsolescence in your brave new world?’ This eventually seeps into a criticism of cis liberals and the way they fetishize trans ideology for argumentative points as well as gatekeep gender performance, but more on that later.
One of the more humorous aspects of the novel is Ron Lord’s sex-bot industry—which at all time risk waking up and moaning ‘daddy’ at inopportune times in the novel—but also soft pitches the first ethical queries about creating, AI and how technological advances will alter the way we love and interact. Ron sees sex-bots as freedom and a way to empower men, while others worry it is another way that ‘men subjugate women.’ In her non-fiction work [b:12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|58527285|12 Bytes How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625925240l/58527285._SY75_.jpg|86107455], which feels like the essay version extension of this novel, Winterson explores this at length in the essay Hot for a Bot. She contrasts notable Chinese feminist Xiao Meili who argues that ‘men will always have outdated expectations, and ‘sex housewife robots’ might actually help women’ with Dr Kathleen Richardson, who founded the Campaign Against Sex Robots in 2015, and ‘is concerned that sex robots reinforce stereotypes, encourage the objectification and commercialisation of women’s bodies and increase violence towards women’ (Ron mentions clients smashing or maiming the heads of his sex-bots is a common problem).
I enjoyed the characterization of Ron as a stereotypical ‘tech bro’, yet in many ways he becomes a rather endearing character and seeing him at least try (though mostly failing) to understand the arguments, particularly around transgender and transhuman issues. ‘Doll-world likes to paint itself as a daring challenge to convention,’ writes Winterson, ‘in reality, doll-world reinforces the gender at its most oppressive and unimaginative.’ There is certainly something to ponder about the way the dolls are ‘made to look like the male-gaze stereotype,’ and programed to be submissive and get off on abuse will do to human relationships, something Frankissstein approaches with humor tinged with horror.
‘All our faults, vanities, idiocies, prejudices, cruelty. Do you really want augmented humans, superhumans, uploaded humans, forever humans, with all the shit that comes with us?’
Winterson plumbs the depths of the creator/creation ideas from Frankenstein in multiple ways here, with Victor Stein pushing boundaries in the whole ‘playing God’ idea as he hopes to resurrect dead organs and even map the brain to upload consciousness for digital and eternal life. There is some great stuff here when present-day Claire, the anti-robot, ultra-Christian unexpectedly joins forces with Ron Lord because she wants to see if the soul will return to the self upon reanimation. Even Mary Shelley must confront a literal flesh-and-blood Victor Frankenstein in a sanitorium, only to find the motif of herself chasing him through all of history as he chases his creation. Winterson World is wild and I love it. We are even treated to real-life I. J. Good’s head preserved in a jar awaiting Victor Stein to ‘steal life from the gods. At what cost?’
‘And what if we are the story we invent?’
The digital or reanimated self, as well as tech-implant in the novel quickly juxtapose issues of transhumanism and transgender questions that make up for some of the most interesting aspects of the novel. Through Ry, a trans man, we see Winterson address the hypocrisy of tech-bros who preach of digital consciousness while still reacting violently (as a misogynistic policing for the patriarchy, as Dr. [a:Kate Manne|16600238|Kate Manne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1689357239p2/16600238.jpg] would put it) or squeamishly to trans people. Men here gender robots they have sex with can’t call Ry by his correct pronouns. When Ron questions how digital existence will change online dating, Ry comments that it would be like old correspondence, all consciousness without the body: ‘there would be no straight, gay, male, female, cis, trans. What happens to labels when there is no biology?’
Winterson steps us through multiple examples of reinventing or rebuilding oneself but then questions why being the gender one identifies with is crossing the line for some. Mary’s half-sister changes her name, for example (‘I did not disapprove of this. Why should she not remake herself? What is identity but what we name it? Jane/Claire’) and Mary considers the story of Pygmalion marrying a statue that he brings to life and then becomes a woman—’a double transformation from lifeless to life and from male to female.’—or the statue of Hermoine that comes to life in Shakespeare’s [b:The Winter's Tale|44133|The Winter's Tale|William Shakespeare|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327893509l/44133._SX50_.jpg|6302847] (which Winterson reimagined in [b:The Gap of Time|24727420|The Gap of Time|Jeanette Winterson|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1438620932l/24727420._SY75_.jpg|44353880]). Naming is important, Winterson writes, as is using correct pronouns lest we Other people. As [a:Albert Camus|957894|Albert Camus|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1686463588p2/957894.jpg] said ‘to name things wrongly is to add to the misfortune of the world,’ such as how calling Frankenstein’s creation a monster drove him into violent isolation.
’If you believe, as I do, that religious texts – like myths – are texts we create to mirror the deeper structures of the human psyche, then yes, naming is still our primary task. Poets and philosophers know this…I cannot conjure spirits, but I can tell you that calling things by their right names is more than giving them an identity bracelet or a label, or a serial number. We summon a vision. Naming is power.’
Ry faces a lot of resistance and fetishizing for being trans (particularly from Vic who is a stereotypical “ally” that amounts mostly to fetishization, you know, they type that will argue that someone isn’t performing identify enough to meet their standards of how trans identity can be discussed) and asks ‘if the body is provisional, interchangeable, even, why does it matter so much what I am?’ Even Victor seems to view Ry mostly as a curiosity, attracted to him as someone who reinvented himself but trips up when Ry asks if he had a penis would Victor still be attracted. Victor, who thinks consciousness and the human body are separate and the former will live without the confines of the latter in his future. Winterson has said ‘‘gender identity is more fluid,’ and grappled with that in extraordinary fashion in Written on the Body which features a narrator with no gender identifies, and it is interesting to see this explored in context of digital futures. There is a sexual assault scene, reminding us that trans people face extreme aggression and violence to the extent that the Human Rights Campaign declared it an epidemic. This is just all very interesting to see addressed in a modern sci-fi novel like this, building on themes Winterson has approached since the 80s.
‘This is a love story’
As with most Winterson, an examination of love is at the heart of this book. And is always written about in such gorgeous prose and phrasing. Take for example Victor’s speech here (there is, to be fair, a lot of soliloquizing in this book):
‘We read a book about ourselves and wonder if we have ever existed. You hold out your hand. I take it in mine. You say, this is the world in little. The tiny globe of you is my sphere. I am what you know. We were together once and always. We are inseparable. We can only live apart.’
This perfectly addresses the theme of Mary Shelley and Frankenstein across time and is rather cute. So is Victor’s constant return to Baye’s theorem telling Ry his presence is new data that alters the outcome. Scientists sure know how to flirt in Winterson World. If I have one criticism of the novel, it is that occasionally the dialogue reads a bit off or forced, though these are characters that are oddballs in society so maybe it works? Whenever there is a clunky moment in the novel it is also Winterson experimenting and I give it grace for at least trying new things. I do enjoy how Winterson has an uncanny pulse on modern day tech and language though, and when Mary responds in all caps ‘THIS IS THE MOST PROFOUND THING THAT CLAIRE HAS SAID IN HER LIFE,’ the folding of past and present makes it read in current twitter voice that makes you !!!! and is just funny. Winterson even makes quoting The Eagles sound brainy.
‘This is madness, I said. What is sanity? he said. Can you tell me? Poverty, disease, global warming, terrorism, despotism, nuclear weapons, gross inequality, misogyny, hatred of the stranger.’
Frankissstein is a bold, brash and brilliant novel that takes you through corkscrews of ideas Winterson continues to astonish me and I have to admit it was also the most fun I’ve had with a book lately. I really enjoying doing outside reading on the topics, such as how Lord Byron was a prick. The Mary scenes are extraordinary, I could have read a book of just that. This is a fun book, though those looking for an entry point might want to start with her earlier work, and while having read the source material was nice, it is not necessary. That said, Winterson reanimates Frankenstein here for a further examination of it’s themes coupled with a modern landscape of technology and ethics for a wild ride of a book you won’t soon forget.
4.5/5
‘Humans: so many good ideas. So many failed ideals.'
jaclyncrupi's review against another edition
4.0
Despite really enjoying the wit, writing and clever ideas here I will forever be shocked that THIS is the book Winterson gets on the Booker longlist. Where were the judges for her first four novels?!?! If you’re new to Winterson and discovering her through her longlisting I beg you not to start here. Go back. Start at the beginning. Also, McEwan can kiss Winterson’s arse as far as I’m concerned – this is the AI book we needed this year.
ezioauditore472's review against another edition
5.0
Really thought-provoking and definitely left me with a feel of unease after finishing it. I particularly enjoyed the way in which the different timelines interact with each other. Also Ry is a sweetheart and Ron reminded me so much of every Will Farrell character ever…
mcicenia's review
challenging
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
It hurts to have to rate this the way i did. it was a really interesting concept, and i was really excited to read a frankenstein retelling, but much of it was lost for me in the harmful tropes used for the trans character.
roisin8242f's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
eaird's review
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
emillikendetro's review against another edition
3.0
ok sarah, finally writing a review to make sure people know what they’re getting into before reading this book. descriptions of mary shelley and lord byron were hilarious and sometimes quite moving. however lots of transphobia here - not just the presence of transphobic characters but winterson makes clear in her characterization of a trans protagonist that she doesn’t know any trans people personally. there is a rape scene involving the one trans character that served absolutely no purpose. if i could ask her one question about the book it would be where did she get the idea that trans masc peoples’ nipples feel MORE post-top surgery???
beckylaxtonbass's review against another edition
emotional
mysterious
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
caitvienthusiast's review against another edition
1.0
still struggling to find a redeemable aspect of this book…
hashbrownhedgehog's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
1.75
he told me that many a time when he was weary of the world, her arms around him were better than any book yet written.
It is not always possible to forgive oneself. And sometimes you make a choice to do something, knowing that you must do it, and that forgiveness is impossible.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Rape
Moderate: Sexual harassment