The casebook of Victor Frankenstein

by Peter Ackroyd. Random House, 2008.

So, Victor Frankenstein had now given us another account of his life and it is rather different to the version he gave to Robert Walton in Mary Shelley's book. Which are we to believe?

That may seem a strange question to ask, since up to now it has always been believed that Mary Shelley, at the age of nineteen, invented Victor Frankenstein as a character in the horror story she concocted one dark and stormy night in a villa on the shores of Lake Geneva. The poet, Percy Bysse Shelley (Mary's husband to be) was there, so too were Alfred, Lord Byron, his physician Dr Polidori, and Mary's step-sister, Claire Claremont. Two of the stories told that night eventually became books: Mary's Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampire.

Peter Ackroyd, however, seems to have come across an autobiography written by Victor Frankenstein in which he tells us how he met and befriended Percy Bysse Shelley and, so, came to meet Mary, Byron and Polidori. So, who are we to believe?

Maybe reading Victor Frankenstein's "casebook", as Ackroyd calls it, will solve the mystery. Or maybe not, since Ackroyd is well known for re-inventing the lives of famous people - Dickens and Defoe, to name just two. Ackroyd's Victor Frankenstein, like Mary's, was born in Switzerland. He speaks (or writes) with almost the same voice and he, too, creates a monster. Some of the things he tells us about himself are the same as in Mary's book: his obsession with the source of life, his experiments with electricity, his horror when his creature comes to life, the murders, the false accusations, the confrontation with his creature and its demands - all these are re-told but there are startling differences.Victor Frankenstein's visit to Oxford on his tour of England becomes, in Ackroyd's book, a much longer stay which is of major importance in his life. Enrolled as an undergraduate at Oxford University, he meets 'Mad Shelley' and is able to provide us with a vivid account of the poet and his 'libertarian' friends and activities. Fact and fiction become ever more entangled in 'The Casebook' as Frankenstein follows Shelley to London, meets the poet's first wife, Harriet (a poor factory worker whom Shelley rescues from a life of drudgery in this account), and becomes familiar with various aspects of nineteenth century London life. He sees the low life of poverty, squalor and inequality, and the high life of theatres, intellectual debate and the power of money. He is taken to meetings of the radical libertarian Popular Reform League, attends a lecture by Humphrey Davey on electricity, and searches out 'sack-'em-up men' (resurrectionists) who supply him with cadavers for his experiments. He buys an old Thames-side warehouse in Limehouse Reach (an area of London docks for which Ackroyd seems to have a particular fancy in his books), and here he does his gruesome experimenting and, eventually, brings his monster to life.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is sparing in his descriptions of what he actually does in his experiments and he passes swiftly over the moment when his creature comes horrifyingly to life. Ackroyd's man, however, tells us all in gory and terrible detail. All this is inventive, imaginative and entertaining, and Ackroyd is expert at re-creating the atmosphere of nineteenth century London. There are times, however, when he seems to be more intent on doing this, and on having fun playing games with fact and fiction, than in getting on with the story. And the story, in broad outline, is Mary Shelley's. Ackroyd has tinkered around with the chronology of events and with some of the characters, and he has inserted and invented biographical details of some real historical figures. Some might say this is plagiarism: others might call it post-modern trickiness. Whatever it is, The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein is an ingenious, light-hearted horror story, with a touch of Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde about it for good measure. It has little of the thought-provoking psychological and social depths of Mary Shelley’s' masterpiece and it is unlikely ever to become as famous. But it does have a much more startling ending!

- Copyright Ann Skea

The chimney sweeper's boy

By Barbara Vine. Penguin Classics, 2008.

Why bestselling novelist Gerald Candless assumed a new identity years before his marriage and the birth of his two daughters isn't revealed until the last chapters of the book, but the effect of his deception on his family drives this story. The search for the origins of a child is themed throughout. In Gerald's wife, Ursula, and his daughters, Hope and Sarah, Vine [Ruth Rendell] has created three complex women and in Gerald, an equally complicated and compelling man. Each chapter is headed by an extract from one of Gerald Candless' fictional novels and Gerald's mystery is wrapped around a forgotten murder.

I loved this book – every word. It deserves to be a penguin classic!!

- Wendy

Definitive list of novels everyone must read

The Guardian reports that they have compiled a 'definitive' list of the top 1000 novels that everyone should read. I'm sure there are people who might find something missing from the list, but 1000 is a lot of books. They're handily split into genre types. Although 'War and travel' seems strange combination. In any case, I'm sure you'll get some good suggestions from the list.

The northern clemency

by Philip Hensher. Knopf, 2008.

A big thick tome, which was short-listed for the 2008 Booker Prize, which might be enough to put people off reading it, but aha, local readers are in for a surprise. The bulk of this novel is set in Sheffield, England in the 1970s and 80s, but 620 pages later, the action shifts to the Manly we know and love. Is this the first time Manly has appeared in a Booker-shortlisted novel? Sydney is affectionately described, with a gee-whiz air that suggests that Hensher must have been over here for only a few days. Without wanting to give it away, the novel’s ending seems to have confused some English reviewers, who mistook the action of a tidal rip for the attack of a shark. Where were the life-savers??

Other reviews thought that the novel was too long, but shorter books can sometimes take longer to read, and this one flows pretty smoothly. It treads similar ground to Jonathan Coe’s The Rotters’ Club, or Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-pool Library, and is not inferior to either of those, only slightly soapier somehow. There would have to be a lot of the author’s childhood on display here, in among the melodrama.

- John.