Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has off late being haunting my fore-brain. No doubt brought on by the passing of the wonderful artist Bernie Wrightson. His adaption of her book was high church arch goth with all its terrifying humanity. In Bernie Wigthson's Frankenstein there are echoes of Gustav Dore's Paradise Lost and also Taylor Coleridge's Ryhme Of The Ancient Mariner. They are referenced and alluded to in Peter Ackroyd's biography of the fictional scientist whose surname has become a by-word for bad and dangerous science. The Casebook Of Victor Frankenstein tells the story of the formative years in this mad and bad young scientists life, a Young Frankenstein if you will.he reanimates the departed in a hand made electric soup and draws forth from who knows where something best left alone, its pretty horrible in an even handed well mannered way.
This is also the most accessible of Peter Ackroyd books I have read in some time. It is probably looked askew upon for that reason in more literary circles. I suspect as much as I managed to read a review of it in one of the on-line book review sections of a self-regarding newspaper where they were a bit sniffy. A Tesco value pickle in the hors d'oeuvre? Oh vicar you jest!
