Frankenstein

"Popular culture has never really done justice to the brilliant philosophical novel that is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Yeah, there’s a reanimated corpse, but he reads Milton and discusses philosophy with his creator, who’s in some ways the real monster. Grimly delivers all that, and while he’s completely faithful to Shelley’s text, he brings a visual style that is totally original: Frankenstein chases his creation through a trippy landscape that is by turns Victorian, modern and futuristic. Grimly draws a creature more gruesome than any movie monster, but simultaneously more sympathetic and human."

"the original is more complex, more overwrought and more harrowing than popular culture had led me to believe."

"What a mad novel. It was held true, however, by its fierce metaphysics and by the wonderfully contradictory figure of the monster. This is a classic that would never have survived a creative writing workshop."

"In 1816, the celebrated poet, London's Lord Byron, challenged his houseguests to write a ghost story. Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin wrote "Frankenstein" when she was 18 years old. Shelley's orphan was far from the oft-seen lumbering brute."

"Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. I reread it every few years."

"I've always wanted to read Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein," the book that started it all."

"Mary Shelley, whose "Frankenstein" marks a kind of Year Zero for industrialized modernity's impact on literature."