In the original “Frankenstein,” the novel by Mary Shelley published in 1818, a scientist named Victor Frankenstein creates a monster — and immediately realizes that the creature is outside of his control.
Here, acclaimed novelist and biographer Ackroyd has reimagined Shelley’s book — and incorporated some real-life characters into the retelling.
In Ackroyd’s tale, Victor Frankenstein is friends with Shelley’s husband, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. The book opens in Oxford, where Frankenstein and Shelley — whom he refers to as Bysshe — are both students. Bysshe is an unapologetic atheist who gets expelled in 1811 for writing a pamphlet in favor of atheism, just as he did in real life.
Meanwhile, Frankenstein has started experimenting on dead animals — pets he buys from poor people — in a makeshift workshop in his dormitory, using the then-nascent science of electricity.
Early on, he reflects: “If I could harness the ethereal flame to practical and benign use, I would consider myself to be a benefactor of the human race. More than that. I would be considered a hero. To bring life to dead or dormant matter . . . this would be an admirable and wonderful triumph!”
It’s the impulse to play God that starts Frankenstein down his horrible, destructive path.
Frankenstein is detached, almost cold, when he describes the experiments he undertakes, but seen in the context of the times that Ackroyd recreates, it’s perhaps not so unbelievable. Early the 19th century, Britain was in the throes of the Industrial Revolution, a time when it seemed as though science and technology could be the cure for most of the nation’s ills.
Still, Frankenstein knows on some level that his experiments are beyond the pale; he keeps the exact details of his work secret for most of the book. And indeed, it’s not long until things go horribly awry. Using electric shock, Frankenstein resurrects the dead body of a 19-year-old medical assistant — and creates his own “monster” who soon goes on a murderous rampage.
He kills Bysshe’s wife Harriet by drowning her in London’s Serpentine River (in real life, Harriet committed suicide in the Serpentine after Bysshe left her, pregnant, for Mary), and Harriet’s brother Daniel hangs for the crime.
The monster kills again, until finally he and Frankenstein reach an uneasy truce. It’s not until the final pages of the novel that we learn the disturbing truth behind the experiments.
The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
by Peter Ackroyd
Nan A. Talese/Doubleday
