One of the things that science fiction writers have learned how to do in the 206 years since Frankenstein was first published is how to bring their readers along with the new elements of the world that they put into their stories. Most of the time, they take care to make the fantastic elements plausible within the world portrayed by the story, and largely consistent once the rules of the game are laid out. I can’t fault Shelley for not following this practice, exactly, since in some ways she wrote the genre of science fiction into being with Frankenstein, but the stacking one implausibility on top of another throughout the novel kept kicking me out of the story to the point that I really never went back in.
The general tale is well-known enough to need very little rehearsing: Victor Frankenstein, scientist, arguably mad, takes various parts of various bodies, and uses secret knowledge that he has discovered to infuse the parts with life. Only after all of this work does Frankenstein realize that the creature is not, to put it mildly, aesthetically pleasing in his appearance. Horrified by his creation, he runs away; when he returns the creature has fled the lab. Frankenstein collapses, and when he has been nursed back to health he does not care what has happened to the creature. Several things happen, one of which is that the creation murders Frankenstein’s younger brother. He begins to wreak vengeance on Frankenstein’s whole family. Victor confronts him in the high Alps near Chamonix, and the creature extracts a promise that Frankenstein will create a mate for him and they will depart from Europe and leave Victor and his family in peace. (Neither seems to consider that this second creature might have a will and desires of her own.) Victor reneges on his promise, and the creature continues his vengeance, killing more who are near and dear to Frankenstein. Victor then turns the tables and pursues the creature to the ends of the earth. The whole is set within a framing narrative of an Arctic explorer writing letters back to his sister in England, under the supposition that his letters will somehow find their way back even if he and his crew perish. Frankenstein has pursued the creature into this uttermost north; on the expedition’s ship he survives long enough to tell his tale and then expires. The creature is last seen in the distance, headed even further north.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/28/frankenstein-by-mary-shelley-2/
There isn’t anything super innovative about the plot of this terrific middle grade graphic novel, but the storytelling choices that the creative team have made give it a truly profound 21st century edge.
Blue literally lives on the wrong side of the tracks. Their mom works multiple crappy jobs to make ends meet and they’re constantly bullied by a trio of mean kids. At least they have their best friend Herschel, who got held back a grade and is obsessed with his Cranky the Quillhog video game. Herschel might not be the brightest but he’s loyal and sweet. When he stands up to the bullies, the latter claim that they’re only picking on Blue because Blue could be rich like them, too, if only Blue had the gumption. Apparently, the Amberline School is built on buried treasure that hunters have been seeking for decades. Maybe Blue could be the one to finally find it.
Lured by the siren call of no longer having to struggle so hard, Blue decides to break into the school one night with faithful Herschel at their side. Despite a fairly thorough search, the friends are discouraged at finding no clues to where the treasure may be, at least until new groundskeeper Madison shows up for her shift. She’s seen some really spooky things at Amberline since she’s started, but she’s prepared to take care of a few ghosts… or so she thinks. Soon enough, Blue, Herschel and Madison will have to join forces if they want to unearth the treasure and escape the curse of Amberline alive.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/27/heebie-jeebies-by-matthew-erman-shelby-criswell/
One of the many astonishing things that Richard Rhodes does in The Making of the Atomic Bomb is to match the tone and pace of each of the major sections to their theme. It’s common enough in good novels, but uncommon in non-fiction, and vanishingly rare in a non-fiction work of this size and scope. The third and final part is just two long chapters, one on the Trinity test and the other on Hiroshima. They are tales of awe and terror. The middle section takes eight chapters to show the immense logistical effort to create what was necessary to build the first bomb, including wholly new cities and one of the world’s largest industrial plants, all in secret and in competition with everything else urgently needed to win the war. Those chapters are methodical, urgent, but also bureaucratic, tales of memos and transfers. The first section is all about understanding the atom, about the excitement of discovery. Words like “surprise” and “joy” recur throughout this part, as scientists take unusual experimental results and try to make sense of them, or propose theories about matter that can be tested, and then devise experiments to find out.
“As his protégé James Chadwick said, [Ernest] Rutherford’s ultimate distinction was ‘his genius to be astonished.’ He preserved that quality against every assault of success…” (p. 36) Rhodes details how Rutherford’s first experimental astonishment led to discoveries in radio waves that, for a time, put him ahead of Marconi. He went on to discover radioactive half-life, the difference between alpha and beta particles, to put forward the theory that an atom’s mass is concentrated in its nucleus, to co-develop atomic numbering, and to lead the laboratory that discovered the neutron. Those are some astonishing astonishments.
“[Niels] Bohr learned about radiochemistry from [George] de Hevesy. He began to see connections with his electron-theory work. His sudden burst of intuitions then was spectacular. He realized in the space of a few weeks that radioactive properties originated in the atomic nucleus but chemical properties depended on the number and distribution of electrons.” (p. 67) Within a year Bohr wrote a three-part paper titled “On the constitution of atoms and molecules” laying out an important step forward in modeling atomic structure, one that is still taught as a gateway to more complex models.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/26/the-making-of-the-atomic-bomb-by-richard-rhodes-pt-3/
Who doesn’t love a French bulldog? With their compact size, sweet faces and affectionate natures, Frenchies are some of the cutest pups around!
Our hero Gus Davis is an adorable Frenchie whose best friend is his owner Bean. When she comes home from the store one day, Gus immediately sniffs out that she has cookies in her shopping. Bean tells him that he has to wait till after dinner, and tho Gus does his best, he just can’t help wanting to grab a quick treat beforehand. Waiting is so hard! Luckily for him, Bean is a dog owner who is as good-hearted as she is wise, and makes sure he has plenty of other things to distract himself with while he’s waiting for dinner to finally be ready. Will all these distractions be enough, tho, for hungry little Gus?
This is a terrific picture book on patience and resilience that will help teach young readers a very important life skill. Being able to amuse oneself while waiting is a valuable coping mechanism, and it’s lovely that Bean is shown as actively helping Gus to figure that out. It’s also really nice that patience is shown as something that you can practice in everyday moments, for even small rewards like watching a beautiful sunset. As with many other good habits, patience is the kind of muscle that only grows stronger with training and use.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/25/the-very-patient-gus-davis-by-laurie-trumble-davis-marjorie-van-heerden/
When the lovely publicist at Abrams Comics pitched this graphic novel adaptation to me, I made him laugh by replying, “I’ll be honest: I desperately hated The Road but am wildly curious to see what Manu Larcenet brings to the story. He can’t make it worse!” You can read my original review of the source material here, and an even more accurate examination of it by another critic I admire here. And no, we’re not being contrarian: that Emperor genuinely has no clothes!
Even so, I love a good graphic novel, and was super happy to crack open this volume. Because a lot of times, even when I hate an author’s writing, I can recognize that there’s still a pretty great story hiding inside the irritating mannerisms. Stripped of Cormac McCarthy’s tedious prose style, I wanted to see whether the plot still worked as entertainment — nvm the issues with narcissism, allegory and genre that I’ll get to briefly later on in this review.
To my immense relief, Manu Larcenet knocks it out of the park with this graphic adaptation. I do admit that I didn’t recognize the ending as being the same as it is in the novel, but that could also be because I was rolling my eyes too hard to remember all the details back when I was reading the original in 2011. I have no doubt that Mr Larcenet was absolutely faithful in this telling, a commitment underscored by the passionate and illuminating letter he included at the end of this volume. He wrote it as a pitch to Mr McCarthy, and begins by talking about how much he loves the atmosphere of the book and the ways he enjoys drawing the contrasts it portrays. All he wants to do with his proposed graphic adaptation, he says, is to draw Mr McCarthy’s words.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/24/cormac-mccarthys-the-road-by-manu-larcenet/
This first book in The Web Of The Spider series for middle grade readers could not come at a more relevant time!
Young Rolf von Heusen is eleven years old in the spring of 1929. His main interests are football and palling around with his friends Ansel and Joshua. He thinks that his hometown of Heroldsberg, Germany is the most wonderful place in the world.
His older brother Romer does not share the same perspective. At fifteen, the once athletic and studious teenager has lost interest in both school and football. Instead, he starts hanging out with some brown shirted newcomers to town, Hans and Nils, who are opening up a youth branch of the Nationalist Socialist German Workers’ Party. They try to sell it to Rolf and Ansel as a character- and skill-building group, like Boy Scouts, but the younger boys are immediately suspicious of the lack of adult guidance and supervision. Besides which Ansel’s dad, a newspaper reporter, often talks about politics at the dinner table and loathes the Nazis with a passion.
The von Heusen dinner table hasn’t been the most tranquil place in the world lately either, with Rolf’s toy manufacturer father and Romer getting into constant fights about the state of both the economy and the country. When their father learns that Romer has joined the Nazi Youth, he goes ballistic. But it’s another discovery that Rolf makes about his brother that could tear their family apart for good.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/23/rise-of-the-spider-by-michael-p-spradlin/
Everybody who’s anybody among Berlin’s dead craves an invitation to Frau Altenshul’s salon. She has devoted her afterlife — much as she had devoted her life — to beauty, whether that was beautiful music, beautiful art, or the simple beauty of conversation among like-minded people. Max Liebermann was a painter who had lived a long life, and he is a regular visitor to the salon; more than that, he can call Frau Altenshul a friend. His indifference to the social jockeying that continued after the end of mortal life is just part of what keeps him high in her esteem. She also values his long experience, the openness of his discussion, and his passion for art.
The dead of Frau Altenshul’s salon are still attached to this world because they met their ends violently. Untimely ripped from life, they are unable or unwilling to go to their final rest. They can see the world as it is, and the world as it was at the time of their death, but as Lange depicts this afterlife they are unable to affect the material world, and they are also unable to develop themselves further. They are stuck in between. Or are they?
Liebermann and Altenshul hear that an acclaimed pianist, Rudolf Lewanski, has come to Berlin. He was a rising star of the musical world before the Nazis shot him at age 28 in the occupied Polish city of Łódź. As has become clear in the novella’s initial chapter, the visitors to Frau Altenshul’s gatherings are all Jewish, and they all perished in the Holocaust. Lewanski is a particularly unquiet ghost; since his death, he has wandered the continent, a few weeks in London, a few months in Prague, here and there, never still. Frau Altenshul tries to persuade him to stay in Berlin, saying that in the new era — the book was published in 1986 and seems to take place roughly about that time — he has nothing more to fear in the city.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/21/das-konzert-by-hartmut-lange/
Had a mini panic attack when I thought we were in October already: reading all the spooky stories currently rolling out will definitely do that to a reviewer! But here we are considering the middle to late part of September and all the intriguing books that I haven’t quite had the time to get to yet but am sincerely hoping to.
First is a holdover from August that I’m finally having to admit defeat at being able to slot into my packed/chaotic schedule. Not Nothing by Gayle Forman is a heartwarming intergenerational tale with a historical angle. Our young hero Alex has had it rough. His father’s gone, his mother is struggling with mental health issues, and he’s now living with an aunt and uncle who are less than excited to have him. Almost everyone treats him as though he doesn’t matter at all.
So when a kid at school actually tells him that he’s nothing, Alex snaps and gets violent. Fortunately, his social worker pulls some strings and gets him a job at a nursing home for the summer rather than a stint in juvie. At the nursing home, he meets Josey, a 107-year-old Holocaust survivor who stopped bothering to talk years ago, as well as Maya-Jade, the granddaughter of one of the residents with an overblown sense of importance. Unlike Alex, Maya-Jade believes that people care about what she thinks and that she can make a difference.
Alex and Josey form an unlikely bond. With Josey confiding in him, Alex starts to believe that he can make a difference, too — a good difference — in the world. If he can truly feel he matters, Alex may be able to finally rise to the occasion of his own life.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/20/tantalizing-tales-september-2024-part-two/
Time to take a break from spooky season reads to cherish a book that will mean so much to any immigrant or person of color.
Inspired by Langston Hughes’ iconic poem I, Too, this children’s picture book follows a young girl who tries to figure out racism and xenophobia as it’s directed at her family. Her grandmother is a hardworking Black immigrant who used the money earned from three jobs to bring her son, the narrator’s father, over to join her in her new country. Her mother moved away from the United States of America’s Jim Crow South, where Mom saw and experienced legally enforced inequality and the struggle for civil rights firsthand. Even in the present day, small incidents at school remind our young narrator that people can still react poorly and hurtfully to the color of her skin out of sheer prejudice.
To help comfort and inspire the narrator, her mother reads to her the poem I, Too, and explains that she belongs right where she is. Diversity is strength, and no one should feel ashamed of their cultural background or racial heritage. While the book does not further expound on the fact that it’s the content of one’s character and actions that are the only basis upon which people should be judged as members of any even halfway decent society — understandably given its remit as a picture book — it does provide an affirming message to any child who fears that the hatred of others means that they don’t have a right to grow up and live where they are.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/19/i-too-am-here-by-morgan-christie-marley-berot/
Me while reading this book: Why am I crying?!
Me reading the artist’s bio at the end: Oh, because this is one of the creators behind Everyday Hero Machine Boy, which was another extraordinary graphic novel that I also did not expect to make me cry.
If you’ve read my last two reviews, you’ll know that this has been an unsettlingly emotional week for me, not helped by my eldest interrupting my reading of The Strange Tales Of Oscar Zahn last night to show me the latest PSA from Sandy Hook Promise. Poor kid didn’t expect me to be openly weeping by the end of the announcement, as he gave me consoling tissues, hugs and an “I’m sorry, Mommy!” Nothing for him to apologize for, I told him, even as the mantle of anxiety and sorrow that comes with living in 21st century America weighed me down. And good thing, I told myself, that I’d taken ninety minutes out of my afternoon earlier to go get a spa pedicure, which definitely helped work at least a little of the prior tension out of my body.
And while we’re at it, it’s time for a little PSA of my own: if you, dear reader, have been thinking about doing some self-care — a nap, some yoga, a spa treatment, whatever you’ve been wistfully wishing you had the time to do — take this as your sign to go for it. We live in a stressful peak-capitalist world that overemphasizes productivity and appearances at the expense of internal health and I have no doubt that you deserve a break.
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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2024/09/18/the-strange-tales-of-oscar-zahn-volume-1-by-tri-vuong/
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire