First of all, welcome to our newest member, Sally Eddows who is a friend of Mary's and mine from the Deep Run Hunt Club. Welcome aboard!! And a very special thank you to Ashley who presented a fabulous Moroccan tagine and cous cous as well as everyone else who contributed. Moroccan is my very favorite cuisine so thank you so much, it was a fantastic meal.
While the meal had no detractors, the book was not so lucky. There were some among us who loved the book, particularly its use of language. Others were neutral but there was a definite contingent of people who did not enjoy it at all, particularly because of its use of language.
Another thing that drew comment was the extensive and loving descriptions of the the landscape and terrain, even when it was the Arctic ice. Frankenstein doted on the landscapes around Geneva and in particular the lake and went there for refuge when he was particularly under stress, which seemed to be always.
There were a lot of questions unanswered in the book like why did Frankenstein obsess on creating a life, then abandon it immediately? How did the monster find his way and survive with no language, no help, no idea of what had happened and how he came to be? Why didn't Frankenstein ever tell his father or Elizabeth what he had done and why he was so worried? And why was there so much snow and ice in the story?
All in all, I was really happy to read this classic and find out the real story, which is so much different than the common belief. It is even more difficult to imagine that this was written by a 19 year old! Although precocious, this book raised many important questions about life and morality, how did she do it at such a young age?
Our next book is Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn and our next meeting is on April 22 at 6:30 pm at Val's house. In a burst of enthusiasm, we also picked our next TWO books. May's book will be Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg, tentatively at Wendy's and our June book is The Dinner, by Herman Koch, tentatively at the Deep Run Hunt Club. May's date is the 13th, and June is the 10th.
See you all on the 22nd!
1 comment:
I was so sorry to miss the discussion, I really wanted to be there. I hope its not unfair to leave comments now but I thought I would throw a wrench into it a bit. Most feel Frankenstein represents her poet husband expressing how he was treated by society after abandoning his pregnant wife (who committed suicide as result) for 16 yr old Mary. But I wonder about another possibility. Mary's father was a renowned anarchist, exposing Mary to strong political/ social views. Perhaps Frankenstein represents society itself: a monster of our own making, pieced together from fragments of intentions, suitable for our own needs, but equally strangling when it no longer suits our needs. I don't know if the cold is simply a setting device to show the cold nature of cruelty of humans/society or if it reflects that the year the book was written was plagued by an eruption from a volcano half a world away that caused europe to experience a winter within the summer causing crops to fail as there was snow fall in June. Quite alot of credit to a 19 yr old, I understand! Just some thoughts....
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