Back in November, I went to see a theatrical adaptation of Frankenstein, which I really enjoyed: I’d fallen in love with Mary Shelley’s original revolutionary novel ever since I studied it in high school, and Rona Munro’s rendition promised the kind of “futurist” theatre I so dearly missed from Italy – which it didn’t fail to deliver.

Just a handful of days later, one of my favourite bookshops, the Parisian Shakespeare and Company, published this post on Instagram – which yes, I was still using at the time – announcing that Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein was the shop owner’s pick for book of the year and presenting it as a “visionary and lyrical work” that “interweaves Mary Shelley’s poetic world […] with today’s terrifying AI industry” and explores “love, feminism, philosophy, and gender”: I was sold immediately.

Since this is a newly published book, I’ll try and stick to a more review-esque format than the last one I did.
Expect no spoilers! And hopefully, a riveting review too.

The loom’s intertwined weave: a tale of ὕβρις

I’ll start by briefly reviewing its first edition: anyone who’s ever seen me in a bookshop knows how big an editorial enthusiast I am – to the point where I own something like 3 different editions of George Orwell’s masterpiece 1984 and 2 of his Animal Farm…

Anyway, I got the same pretty edition that’s featured in the post, with the deep blue dust jacket against which the bold, shocking pink and bright red letters strike a poignant contrast.
But the first things to stand out are the three big, central crosses, printed in an intense glossy red and slightly relieved from the cover, spanning throughout its whole width: it’s immediately clear that this isn’t a lukewarm book – as highlighted by the sticker on the top left, mentioning the book’s longlist nomination for the 2019 Booker Prize Award. At the bottom, the title’s wordplay is made obvious by its styling over three lines, and the last “I” cleverly embeds the subtitle: A love story.
A white spike lies under the crosses and brightens the view; reprised on the spine, it almost spans throughout its entirety and complements the alternation of the two main colours, which eases reading the odd title. On the back, the protagonist’s bold quote on doubleness immediately stands out:

I am what I am, but what I am is not one thing, not one gender.
I live with doubleness.

I’m not a big fan of dust jackets though, and this one’s matte finish makes it quite a fingerprint magnet so, before reading, I slipped it off to reveal the blank, blood red hardback, whose only writings are the title and author on its spine, black in colour and bold in weight. Its first and last inside cover pages reprise the jacket’s navy blue, making for an elegant contrast against the thin folds of the cover’s crimson canvas.

Photos by Chris Lee on Unsplash

The scene opens in 1816: Mary Shelley is in Lake Geneva with her husband Percy and Lord Byron, in the famous gathering that would spawn her masterpiece. Yet the book’s main plot takes place in 2019: the peculiarly-named trans doctor Ry Shelley and visionary computer scientist Victor Stein fall in love at a conference on the future of humanity, robotics and AI, after being linked by a body parts supply chain… Their names aren’t a coincidence either: Ry lives with doubleness, unsatisfied with his original body but at ease in his current one; Victor is interested in the futuristic perspective of getting rid of the biological body as a whole and living as a bare conscience inside an AI.
The parallels are immediately clear, and they don’t stop here: throughout the whole book, chapters focusing on the past and present timelines alternate and intertwine, constantly highlighting the similarities and comparisons between the two – and effectively keeping you turning pages without even noticing. All while tackling all sorts of controversial topics: from intelligent robotic sex dolls to indefinite cryogenic life extension, this book really never stops giving.

It even manages to present a compelling love story – not something I’m particularly used to reading – which mysteriously spans through time, reality and metaphorical patterns, and winds back on itself in a circular resolution – not just a love story between Ry and Victor, but the story of a much wider concept of love: for life and death, for the body and the mind, for creation, for progress, for humanity and between humans, in all its complexity and uncomfortable surprise.
It’s this sheer mystery of something vaguely beyond our comprehension, yet close enough for us to meddle with it, that gives the book its prophetical feeling: in its parallels that bend reality just enough to make you question what’s real; in its somewhat cyclical narrative that defies your concept of time; but also, and most evidently, in its warning us, just as the original Modern Prometheus did, of the dangers posed not by progress itself, but rather by the same positivist approach about progress in science and technology which ruled the 19th century – and which still looms nowadays.

Yet overall, the single best adjective to define this book is undoubtedly challenging: its thorough examination on the number of issues it tackles perfectly depicts all the facets of the complex scenario humanity currently faces, and constantly proves deeply thought-provoking; its irreverent style, its sharp irony and realist grit all contribute to its power in shaking one’s convictions. It’s an intriguing take on all sorts of topics not just about contemporary philosophy, but also – and most refreshingly! – offers an interesting perspective on the relationship between creator and creation: both for “artificial existence”, be it the spark of life in Frankenstein’s original creature or Victor’s utopian sentient AI, and for creative work.
And while I’m glad to vividly recommend this book to everyone, it’s exactly to artists that I want to recommend it the most, both for its endless source of reflection prompts and creative ideas, and for its meta- approach to the artistic experience itself.

Happy reading, I really hope you can enjoy this book as much as I did.

P.S: more food for thought

The topics proposed in this book bring back to the wider AI debate, concerning all sorts of issues, from art to war – one that the Australian film Machine depicts with great balance; however, while reading, the idea stroke me about one such topic, which I realised I don’t really see around as much as I’d like: law.
Sure, a quick search online revealed lots of interesting results – [1] [2] [3] [4] – but I don’t really see it around in non-technical environments as much as other topics, yet I find it a really intriguing and promising conversation starter: the role of a judge, in particular, requires exactly those flexibility, understanding, and just “common sense” in the interpretation of the superior, ideal principle of justice – that “judgment”, appropriately named, that really is one of the current main challenges in AI development.