It was just way too disjointed for me. ( )

I finally finished after savoring this over the past month. So much to say, collecting my thoughts which seems the appropriate thing to do for a book where the word "mind" appears at least once on almost every page.

It's a brilliant and rewarding book for those with patience and those who like a good challenge. The writing style will take some adapting to: between the Monster's note-taking, how he juxtaposes quotes, notes and snippets of his autobiography and the epistolary mode which presents the narrative and events of Claire, Clerval and Mary, but more importantly their inner monologues and perceptions. But what better way to explore the concept of our minds, how we think, how we trap or free ourselves, all questions vital to the Monster as he tries to make sense of his existence, of his solitude, of his ability to think and read and feel.

I need more time to flesh out my thoughts, but I found Sheck's previous book, her poetry collection Captivity a good primer for understanding her preoccupation with the mind, thought, the process of thinking. ( )

This work can be approached any number of ways: as a novel, as a poem, as a scholarly inquiry into the ideas behind Frankenstein, as a critical analysis of modern life (circa 2007). I purchased this with the understanding it was a novel, and read it as such; therefore, I will review it as a novel.

Frankenstein's monster, still alive and unaged today, living in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (before gentrification, natch), alone save for a journal and the sort of book collection one would expect to find in an squat that's been abandoned by undergraduates: that's a good story. Unfortunately, the novel doesn't tell it.

Mary Shelley, living under the shadow of her creation all the rest of her life, unable to come to terms with her husband's death or her own poverty and illness: that's a good story. That one isn't told, either.

The meditations of the sole artificial life form on the planet, as he watches his creators die and their society move on: that's a good story. That one's not here, either.

Mary Shelley encountering the monster in a graveyard as a child, becoming obsessed with him/it the rest of her life, and writing her novel [b:Frankenstein: The 1818 Text|35031085|Frankenstein The 1818 Text|Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1498841231l/35031085._SY75_.jpg|4836639] as a sort of therapy? That's the one we get, and it is not a good story. One might even call it a lame story at the risk of being mob-lynched for counterdisablery: not only is it a weak idea, it is insulting to Mary Shelley and it trivializes her singular accomplishment.

So, without any story to speak of, what are we left with? A bunch of notes and musings scribbled in a library while studying the complete correspondence of Mary Shelley, with an occasional break to read [b:Dream of the Red Chamber|535739|Dream of the Red Chamber|Cao Xueqin|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1369604121l/535739._SY75_.jpg|523200].

The purported questioning of his place in existence by the monster is limited to the occasional, "What is my place in existence?". Lest you think I exaggerate:

I look out at the stone face across the way, the PARK sign, read MTA posters as I ride:
IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING.
[rest of the MTA fearmongering ad text]
REMEMBER. YOU ARE THE EYES AND EARS OF THE SYSTEM.
Didn't your world fill with suspicion because it had me in it? From the moment I opened my eyes, you couldn't trust who you were, what you had made or done, what I was or might become. Yet mostly you said nothing, until maybe those last hours of your dying. In that way weren't we alike?

By the way, if you thought the "stone face" in that excerpt was an insightful observation of a typical straphanger, then wow are you unprepared for the level of acuity in this book. It's face carved in stone. We're not even told the face of what, let alone who, or given any sort of description: a stone face is what it is, and a stone face is all you're going to get.

There's a bunch of this garbage, pages and pages and pages of it. The attempt to work in Mary Shelley's correspondence is particularly strained: the monster does not visit a library, perhaps while indulging an obsession with the woman who told his story; no, he/it is granted visions of these writers from the past, as their hands write the fragments of their letters that are included in this book. Are these hallucinations? Do ghosts haunt the monster? Is the monster actually peering back through time? Nobody knows, the author feels no need to explain this, and to be honest I don't see why anyone should care. Any answer would be more interesting than no answer, but still not interesting enough to make the disjointed fragments worth reading.

To be fair, the section on Dream of the Red Chamber is pretty good, and if the monster had been replaced meta-fictionally with a modern reader, a student perhaps, or a hermit crashed on an island, or someone who found the book in the seat-pocket on a flight and began reading it, that section would make for a fine standalone work. But, sadly, it's just kinda wedged in here, sans rhyme, sans reason, sans explanation of any kind.

One final note: it has long been a habit of mine, since being handed some anarchist screeds to "review" in my early years, to take a particularly problematic book and attempt to read it backwards, then randomly. If the book loses neither comprehension nor narrative drive though either of these methods, it is a one-star book like this one: disqualified through lack of coherence.

PREVIOUSLY:
I have not yet finished this one, but it's pretty clear what I'm in for.

The attempt is to tell a story through the journal written by Frankenstein's monster, starting around when he was trapped on the ice floe. An interesting idea, though why the need to make the monster a childhood friend of Mary Shelly is beyond me - certainly we all know this book is fiction, so why add the extra complexity of making a case for Frankenstein being non-fiction?

At any rate, the "journal" is just disjointed nonsense. I suppose the author believes this is stream-of-consciousness, but it isn't. Perhaps some time spent reading actual journals from writers of the period would have been helpful. A journal always has an audience, and while each day may contain ideas of events completely different from preceding and subsequent days, the content within a day is generally structured and coherent. Almost as if the purpose of a journal is to make sense of a day's events, rather than merely to waste the time of any future reader. ( )

A bizarrely fascinating take on the Frankenstein story from poet Laurie Sheck, A Monster's Notes imagines Frankenstein's monster living on, first in the Arctic and later in New York City, of all places. Here he commonplaces and takes notes on all manner of topics, from time to genetic engineering. And at certain points the narrator sees the writings of Mary Shelley, Clair Claremont, and Henry Clerval. Sheck has taken many liberties with their lives, and created letters and other documents by them (along with using some authentic texts).

Very creative, and certainly imaginative. It's a hard book to follow, in some ways, given the very unconventional structure, but looking at things from the "monster's" perspective (at various points the narration is addressed to Dr. Frankenstein himself, as the being's creator) makes for a unique reading experience. ( )