IMO Knowledge Team Reads discussion

Happy March all,

I wanted to mention something I noticed in starting this book, partly because I am curious if anyone else felt similarly, partly because I want to talk about this book.

I have not read this book before and my experiences with the wonderful world of Frankenstein is largely based on movies, TV, and parodies. I was not expecting the start to this book. To begin with, I was very thrown by the first few letters.

I was expecting pretty much anything other than a series of letters from some guy who is looking for a passage through the Arctic Circle. The focus on his expedition and past experiences in boating kind of threw me off. I found myself wondering where Igor was or what the point of these letters were.

I can certainly appreciate the approach for setting up a mechanism for the narrative that follows. I am not super familiar with how most literature was written in 1818, but I do recall that fiction written in novel form was still relatively young in terms of how we think of them today back in the early 1800's. I find it very interesting that in trying to capture a reader, Shelly begins the book by making it seem like something that really happened and is just a recount made by someone not directly involved in the story. I do not think something like that would fly these days since it takes a little while to get the story moving. But, it still set the tone pretty well for me.

I do not want to comment to far along in the story since I do not know how far everyone is. I will admit to being done with the book and that I really enjoyed it despite it depressing me.

This format was super common in the 18th and 19th centuries, actually! Novels were frequently set up as "nonfiction" accounts that some kindly soul heard from some wretched soul, and then the kindly soul decided to share the account so that others might learn from the tale. I'm not well versed in the English versions of this format, but in French, "La dame aux camellias," "Manon Lescaut," and "Ourika" are all great 18th century examples of the novel-as-this-crazy-story-this-person-told-me-about.