Frankissstein

Frankissstein is a fragmented, at times dazzlingly intelligent meditation on the responsibilities of creation, the possibilities of artificial intelligence and the implications of both transsexuality and transhumanism ... As is to be expected from a novel both constructed from and beholden to the nebulous realm of ideas, there are moments when the book’s speculative nature threatens to overwhelm its sense of tangible reality ... As a result, readers may occasionally begin to feel rather disembodied themselves, immersed in the deoxygenated atmosphere of pure thought. Winterson’s great gift as a writer, though, is the ability to inject pure thought with such freewheeling enthusiasm and energy that ideas take on their own kind of joyous life. Frankissstein abounds with invention ... Such is Winterson’s comfort across modes and forms, she’s also able to leaven the hyperinvention of rogue science with deeply evocative historical realism balanced by hilarious, almost bawdy set pieces ... this is a work of both pleasure and profundity, robustly and skilfully structured, and suffused with all Winterson’s usual preoccupations – gender, language, sexuality, the limits of individual liberty and the life of ideas.

...a brainy, batty story—an unholy amalgamation of scholarship and comedy. She manages to pay homage to Shelley’s insight and passion while demonstrating her own extraordinary creativity ... From the start, these contemporary scenes feel like they’ve got a screw loose in the best possible way ... The dialogue is slick and funny, often delightfully obscene, but beneath all the kookiness, Winterson is satirizing sexual politics and exploring complicated issues of human desire. (Ian McEwan’s recent novel Machines Like Me buzzed through similar material, but it feels a little lifeless compared to Frankissstein) ... in Winterson’s hands it’s a bag of provocative tricks and treats. With diabolical ingenuity, she’s found a way to inject fresh questions about humanity’s future into the old veins of Frankenstein ... Winterson’s cleverest maneuver may be suggesting that transgender people are the true pioneers of a self-determined future in which we’ll all design our own bodies. Recast in that way, Frankenstein’s creation was not monstrous; he was just too early.

... far, far more than a reimagining of Mary Shelley’s 19th-century monsterpiece. It’s a novel fizzing with ideas, one that toys with timelines and intertextuality. It veers from the Gothic to the satirical and seamlessly interweaves social commentary on everything from gender to the cultural hegemony to our obsessions with social media and future tech. The Frankensteinian notion of creating a sentient being has obvious parallels with artificial intelligence, and that’s what Jeanette Winterson has in her sights ... Mary’s scenes, which are laced throughout the novel, are visceral and seeped with Gothic gloom. You can almost smell the sweat and sense the languor and claustrophobia out of which so many great pieces of writing were created ... Occasionally, [Stein] comes across as little more than a TED Talk himself, spouting chunks of research and philosophical meanderings that, while fascinating, stall the novel...But these forays into didacticism are balanced with gleeful, highly imaginative set pieces rich with black humor ... Winterson has stitched together that rarest of beasts: a novel that is both deeply thought-provoking and provocative yet also unabashedly entertaining (I laughed out loud more times than I could count). Frankissstein, like its protagonist Ry, is a hybrid: a novel that defies conventional expectations and exists, brilliantly and defiantly, on its own terms.