Rot and Rochester: Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Bessie, when she heard this narrative, sighed and said, "Poor Miss Jane is to be pitied too, Abbot."
"Yes," responded Abbot, "if she were a nice, pretty child, one might compassionate her forlornness; but one really cannot care for such a little toad as that."
"Not a great deal, to be sure," agreed Bessie. "At any rate, a beauty like Miss Georgiana would be more moving in the same condition."
"Yes, I dote on Miss Georgiana!" cried the fervent Abbot. "Little darling!--with her long curls and her blue eyes, and such a sweet colour as she has; just as if she were painted!"
I identified more with Jane Eyre than boys were generally supposed to, but her experience sang to my heart. A childhood of abuse, bullied by other children and called a failure-for-life by the adults in her world, then sent off to school with instructions to be treated as a bad child, further bullied, but loved and encouraged by servants or teachers who don't follow orders. What would i know about that?
Nevertheless, Jane Eyre persists.
I admire Jane for being her own person under pressure to be, first a victim, then someone else's inferior. She does not bow to society people who think her beneath them. She refuses a financially advantageous offer of marriage and goes off alone to find herself, which she does after a long period of being incognito, coming back to the main love interest only after circumstances have changed substantially for both of them.
I'm told by my sister-in-law that there is such a thing as a "Jane Eyre fistbump", shared under "Reader, I married him" circumstances, or perhaps when sharing a moment with someone who, like you, has overcome hardship and/or expectations to find fulfillment and success on one's own terms. I do not presume to walk with that particular sisterhood, but I find at least some familiarity there. This is a book everyone should read at least once, and some will find sustenance in for a lifetime. Very high recommendations.
The 19th Century Murders: Weighed in the Balance & The Silent Cry, by Anne Perry; Cut to the Quick, by Kate Ross; Die Upon a Kiss; Wet Grave, by Barbara Hambly
There was a young woman lying there, fully dressed, with the bedclothes pulled up almost to her shoulders. Her red-gold hair was half undone and spread on the pillow. Her head was turned away from him. She appeared to be asleep. He stood blinking at her for a moment or two. Then he closed te door behind him and went to the bed.
--from Cut to the Quick
"Charging into the enemy's guns may make you a name in history," he said acidly, "but it is an idiotic sacrifice of life. It is all very poetic, but the reality is death, agony, crippled bodies and widows weeping at home. Mothers who never see their sons again. It is more than time you stopped dreaming and looked at life as it is." He heard his voice growing higher and louder and he could not help it. He was clenching his fists until his muscles ached, and without being aware of it he chopped his hand up and down in the air. "Did you not hear that letter? Didn't you look at the jurors' faces? Gisela is a heroine, the ideal of their romantic imagination! You have attacked her with a charge you cannot prove, and that makes you a villain. Nothing I say is going to change that. If I counterattack, I make it worse."
--from Weighed in the Balance
Which of those men, thought January as the final grace notes of d'Isola's simple fioritura climbed into silence, agreed with Iago? It was all very well for them to have mistresses of color--as Henri Viellard, mammoth and solemn in his gray coat and flowered waistcoat had Dominique--girls who they would bull for years without ever considering them good enough to marry...But a black man bedding a white woman? Marrying her? Loving her so desperately that the thought of her betrayal drove him literally mad?
Unthinkable.
---from Die Upon a Kiss
Started yet another series of Regency mysteries this week, and it's a good one. Cut to the Quick introduces us to the dandy Julian Kestral, and his sidekick servant Dipper the Reformed Pickpocket Who Means Well But Can't Resist The Shiny Things Wot-Wot. You can probably guess where my affections lie. Kestral saves a young fool from being fleeced at a London casino and in return is invited by said fool to be in the wedding party in one of those English manors full of Baronets, colonels, Ladies, fops, and other Downton people who hate each other and have Deep Dark Secrets One Would Kill To Protect. And then Kestal finds a corpse in his bed, and he and Dipper dig for clues while the manorial family is properly horrified. You know exactly what you're signing up for with this book, and if cozies are your cuppa, you'll be well satisfied.
Weighed in the Balance, while still good, is not one of Perry's best. It concerns a royal family in exile from one of the small German nations of the era, a prince of which has died under circumstances such that a Countess has accused the princess of murder, and been sued for slander for her temerity. The stakes are high, but the big reveal made me shrug. Silent Cry is devastatingly realistic and gripping, but requires a content warning for graphic descriptions of sexual violence and the psychological effects it has on its victims. The book begins with two men found in the streets of a nasty neighborhood, the father beaten to death and his son almost dead and traumatized to the point where he cannot speak. Meanwhile, Monk undertakes to help some women from an equally seedy neighborhood nearby--they have been sexually assaulted, and the police shrug and say meh because slut-shaming. The secret of why the barely alive young man spends much of the book opening his mouth to scream but emitting no sound lands like a hammer blow and is not for people who are easily triggered.
Barbara Hambly requires more concentration than the other mystery writers I'm currently binge-reading, but the work is culturally worth it, if usually deeply disturbing for its exploration of the most horrific aspect of American history. Die Upon a Kiss, for instance, is about the implications of producing Othello (as a fictional sensational opera, lauded in Europe), in 1930s New Orleans, where a bunch of shitty white people are prepared to kill to prevent anything from rocking their way of life based on the premise that POC are things to be owned by white people. Wet Grave, which centers around the death of an old, drunk, black harlot who no one but January will even bother to notice much less investigate and avenge, and which segues into buried treasure legend, slave revolt, and deadly flood, would under different treatment be styled as an exciting adventure, but in Hambly's hands serves to further denounce antebellum America's lack of humanity in an uncomfortable way that most of us need to face.
The Greatest that Ever Got Chalk on His Coat: Geometrical Researches on the Theory of Parallels, by Nikolai Ivanovich Lobachevski
If to the line AB, two perpendiculars AC = BD are erected, and their end points C and D joined by a straight line, then the resulting quadrilateral ABCD will have two right angles at A and B, but two acute angles at C and D, which are equal to one another, as we can easily see by thinking the quadrilateral superimposed on itself so that the line BD falls upon AC and AC upon BD.
Halve AB and erect at the midpoint E the line EF perpendicular to AB. This line must also be perpendicular to CE, since the quadrilaterals CAEF and FDBE fit one another if we so place one on the other that the line EF remains in the same position. Hence the line CD can not be parallel to AB, but the parallel to AB for the point C, namely CG, must incline toward AB and cut from the perpendicular BD a part BG < CA. Since C is a random point in the line CG, it follows that CG itself nears AB the more, the farther it is prolonged.
I still have a note that was passed to me in college math by Victoria Landgraf: "If we were Bolyai/Lobachevski perceivers, we would be on a government list of potential troublemakers." So there's that.
TheGreat Books of the Western World set, which claims that "anyone" can and should read everything in the set, has humiliated me for parts of the last six and a half years with its science/math selections. All of Euclid, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Cartesian geometry, and Newton, full of equation after equation. I am considered an intelligent man, but all of them defeated me to some extent.
They should have included Lobachevski. Just 50 pages including the introduction; 37 theorems (the equivalent of one book of Euclid, and the first 15 are axioms anyhow), fairly easy to understand, and kind of mind-blowing in a way that draws one to consider mathematical thought as a potentially beautiful art form.
The main point, given clearly in Theorem 22, where it breaks off from "ordinary geometry" into "imaginary geometry" (non-Euclidean, that is), is to assume for the sake of argument that parallel lines will eventually, eventually meet ("But aren't parallel lines DEFINED as a set of lines that will not meet?" "Yabbut what if they DID? Shaddup."), and run with it. The result includes a lot of curved triangles, like they were drawn on the surface of a sphere, and what looks like portals into another dimension. Do not attempt at home without 24 hours of fasting and prayer, and do not attempt to play pool for money while under the influence of Lobachevski. #SoWhoDeservesTheCredit? #AndWhoDeservesTheFame?
Are There No Workhouses? Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens
For a week after the commission of the impious and profane offense of asking for more, Oliver remained a close prisoner in the dark and solitary room to which he had been consigned by the wisdom and mercy of the board...The board took counsel together on the expediency of shipping off Oliver Twist, in some small trading vessel bound to a good unhealthy port. This suggested itself as the very best thing that could possibly be done with him: the probability being, that the skipper would flog him to death, in a playful mood, some time after dinner, or would knock his brains out with an iron bar; both pastimes being, as is pretty generally known, very favourite and common recreations among gentlemen of that class.
--from the original Dickens
"Seconds? Gee thanks, Mr. Bumble!"
--alternative ending, the very short version
Like many, I am most familiar with the Oliver story from the musical adaptation, full of jolly, dancing ragamuffins and sassy, maternal harlots, where Fagin is a lovable rogue and even Mr. Bumble, somber child-trafficking song notwithstanding, is usually played for laughs as a fat, dimwitted buffoon in the style of Sergeant Schultz, goofy Nazi guard. Only Bill Sikes is an irredeemable villain through and through. Possibly Noah Claypole too, though most versions I've seen have left out the funeral parlor sequence entirely.
Yah, Dickens's novel isn't that story.
For one thing, Bumble and the work-house matron aren't alone. Every act of cruelty and deprivation is backed up by the town council, and the decision to sell the boy Oliver is made and approved by all the local officials as a savings to the "decent" public's taxes, and this is Dickens's main point.
For another, Fagin's underworld is painted with all the nastiness you would expect in a tale where urchins are forced into crime. Fagin is a greasy, chortling, offensively anti-Semitic stereotype loved by neither child nor adult, whose poky jesting manner is as sincere as that of the ironically polite mafia gangster preparing to rub out a victim. Dodger, far from the boon "consider yourself one of us" companion, betrays Oliver at the first opportunity. In fact, for reasons made clear in the book that are left out of the musical, the Fagin gang's objective is to get Oliver arrested and jailed on purpose. There are MANY dark plots and subplots that the musical doesn't even scratch the surface of.
In fact, everyone Oliver meets in the large, unfamiliar city, turns out to be, by bizarre coincidence, familiar with some aspect of his birth and vital to the plot. Two separate crime victims coincidentally turn out to be exactly the people that those who steer him into the crimes, completely obliviously, LEAST want him to encounter.
So--it's also one of the master's first novels, and he's still learning the style that would eventually make him famous. Is it melodramatic and clumsy? Very much so. Is it a gripping read? Also, very much so. It is large. It contains multitudes. Very much recommended, but not so much for children as the musical would suggest.
Philosophers' War: Seven Surrenders, by Ada Palmer
Tyrants and assassins have a great symbiosis. Assassins are always evil and despised (even when our effects are good, we're still a bad means to a good end) until tyrants crop up. Then suddenly, assassins are heroes, lifelines, suddenly we alone have the power to save the world without a revolution and the destruction revolutions bring. You admit you need us. But, between tyrants, you forget that assassins will only be here, ready, when you want us if we've been here, ready, the whole time. You feel dirty keeping such a weapon in the house, but somebody has to keep one or it won't be there when the bad wolf comes to huff and puff.
This is the sequel to Palmer's Hugo-nominated Too Like the Lightning (see this April's Bookpost), and is still impressively scholarly but has more of a balance between the heavy philosophy and being entertaining. By now, we know a bit about the characters and the world--a world that has been at peace for generations, and is divided not into nations but into "hives", each based on different values and models of government. It reminded me a bit of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri game, where your objective and winning strategy differs based on which of several philosophically opposed characters you play.
The plot becomes almost soap opera-ish (which is not a bad thing; some of the greatest novels and dramas ever written do the same), with Mycroft or one of the other occasional narrators having to stop and explain what just happened (So-and-so is a witch! yes, I forgot to tell you before that there's witchcraft here; so and so has been the offspring of so-and-so the whole time! so-and-so just did what someone else, like me, maybe, was trying to manipulate them into doing the whole time!), and sometimes the reveals come so quickly on top of each other that one forgets what was originally the given circumstance, and a lot of people, me included, may have to read both books twice. It will be worth it. Very well constructed.
Cold Equations: The Dark Forest & Death's End, by Cixin Liu
I don't have much to say except a warning: Life reached an evolutionary milestone when it climbed onto land from the ocean, but those first fish that climbed onto land ceased to be fish.
Similarly, when humans truly enter space and are freed from the Earth, they cease to be human. So, to all of you I say this: When you think about heading into outer space without looking back, please reconsider. The cost you must pay is far greater than you could imagine.
Death's End is the fourth Hugo-nominated novel I've read this year, and one that instantly vaulted to the top of my list so far, both for readability and for value as great literature (a modern contribution to the Great Books of the Eastern World). Three Body Problem, the first in a trilogy won in 2015 (It was my second choice), and Dark Forest is the second book.
Holy crap. I don't quite know where to begin with something so epic, and I don't want to spoil the feeling you will get as various things happen. A comparison with Clarke's Childhood's End and Stapledon's Last and First Men is appropriate, just for the scale of time and the breadth of fascinating ideas presented, from the end of Constantinople to the end of the Universe, and containing original concepts in hard science, political theory, psychology, philosophy, and the interpretation of fairy tales.
If you're a geek at all, there will be parts that fascinate you, and probably some parts that bore or bother you, just because there is so very much to grasp. Very highest recommendations.
Aubrey/Maturin: The Surgeon's Mate, The Ionian Mission; Treason's Harbor, by Patrick O'Brian
He had pursued his strikingly beautiful, spirited, fashionable wife for years and years before marrying her in mid-Channel aboard a man-of-war: for so many years indeed that he had become a confirmed bachelor at last, too old a dog to give up his tricks of smoking tobacco in bed, playing his cello at odd untimely moments, dissecting anything that interested him, even in the drawing room; to old to be taught to shave regularly, to change his linen, or to wash when he did not feel the need--an impossible husband. He was not house-trained; and although he made earnest attempts at the beginning of their marriage, he soon perceived that in time the strain must damage their relationship, all the more so since Diana was as intransigent as himself and far more apt to fly into a passion about such things as a pancreas in the drawer of the bedside table or orange marmalade ground into the Aubusson.
--from The Ionian Mission
Volumes 7 through 9 of the delightful romp that is O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin series continues with fun and excitement in the Atlantic, the Baltic, the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. Wonderful conversations, romances, epic sea adventures, spycraft and espionage, behind-the-scenes plots, botany and biology--it's all there in glorious regency color and, as usual, has my highest recommendations.
On the Shoulders of Particles: A New System of Chemical Philosophy, by John Dalton
The following general rules may be adopted as guides in all our investigations regarding chemical synthesis:
1. When only one combination of two bodies can be obtained, it must be presumed to be a binary one, unless some cause appear to the contrary.
2. When two combinations are observed, they must be presumed to be a binary and a ternary.
3. When three combinations are obtained, we may expect one to be a binary and the other two ternary.
4. When four combinations are observed, we should expect one binary, two ternary, and one quaternary, &c.
5. A binary compound should always be specifically heavier than the mere mixture of its two ingredients.
6. A ternary compound should be specifically heavier than the mixture of a binary and a simple, which would, if combined, constitute it, &c.
7. The above rules and observations equally apply when two bodies, such as C and D, D and E, &c. are combined.
See my thoughts on Lobachevski, above, and on Ptolemeic astronomy, March 2013. It seems to me, Dalton's readable tract on chemistry, warts and all, is a better fit for the "Great Books" series than some of the great but indecipherable works actually selected, especially if, as with Ptolemy, it is considered worthwhile to study "great mistakes" as a bridge to the thought process that got there and the missed data or measuring ability that led both there and to what we believe today.
Dalton came up with modern atomic theory, and though his classification of elements does not fit the periodic table, I found it fascinating and comprehensible why he concluded what he did. If I'd read it earlier, I might have found it easier to understand the earlier scientists. Recommended as an intellectual exercise.
Booga-Booga, kiddies--it's the World Spirit! The Philosophy of History, by Georg WTF Hegel
The Thersites of Homer who abuses the kings is a standing figure for all times.
blows--that is, beating with a solid cudgel--he does not get in every age, as in the Homeric one; but his envy, his egotism, is the thorn which he has to carry in his flesh; and the undying worm which gnaws him is the tormenting consideration that his excellent views and vituperations remain absolutely without result in the world. But our satisfaction at the fate of Thersitism also, may have its sinister side.
See bookposts from January through March this year for more Hegel. His last book is quite different from the others (a note indicates it was published posthumously, after being compiled from lecture notes) in that it's more readable and more thought provoking to the likes of me, who careth more about world events than about the process of thinking.
There's a lot going on here. for one, there's the hypothesis that "history is moving westward", meaning Hegel begins with ancient China and then traces what he considers the important phases of history through Sumeria and Babylon, to Palestine and Egypt, to Greece and Rome, and so on. I've felt a sense of modern western history having a distinct Italian era, a French era, a British era, a transatlantic UK/USA era, an American era, and now a transpacific era shared between the west coast and the Pacific rim, with China and/or India poised to dominate in a coming era. Spain, Germany, Russia and Texas have been major players, but did not occupy the #1 spot for a consistent period.
Or at least that's my take. Hegel, a German, chooses to define all of the northern-origin peoples who sacked the Roman empire as "Germans", and therefore defines all of post-Roman history as "the German Era". This definition was a major basis for the Third Reich, a century later, to classify the people of Europe as "French-Germans", "British-Germans", etc., and to assert that it was only right for all "Germans" to be one nation under the rule of--you guessed it--"Germany".
Also used as Hitler's philosophical basis was Hegel's major thesis that history is caused by a "world spirit" that manifests itself through those "great men"--Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, etc.--who alone make history, blaze with the World Spirit briefly, and then die young, or get Swiss-cheesed in the Senate or are shipped off to Elba. Hitler's self-identification as one of those "great men", above petty laws and rules of humanity that are beneath the notice of the World Spirit directly brought about the worst atrocities of modern times and illustrate how very dangerous a philosophical concept can be in the wrong hands. Tolstoy's epic docufictiondrama about Napoleon's Moscow campaign was written as a refutation of the Hegelian "great man" theory of history.
Somewhere today there is an Internet troll, steeped in Hegel, Nietzche, Ayn Rand and other hero-fetish philosophies, who imagines himself to be a "great man", above the rules, and who will in our times, attempt to assert dominance in a way that causes unimaginable harm. (I'd suggest that that man might be in the White House as I type this, except that I'm pretty sure that that guy thinks Hegel is something you buy with cream cheese and lox at a New York deli. So we're safe from that philosophical theory, although the "I'm rubber, you're glue" doctrine remains a big, big problem to be reckoned with).
Baw-awwl-zac: The Quest for the Absolute; Melmoth Reconciled; Seraphita, by Honore de Balzac
You can sell everything, even your children. We will all obey you without a murmur, but I must point out to you that we have no money left, that we have scarcely enough to live upon this year, and that Felice and I have to work night and day to earn the money to pay for Jean's school expenses by the lace dress which we are making. Father dear, give up your researches, I implore you."
"You are right, dear child. In six weeks they will come to an end. I shall have discovered the Absolute, or the Absolute will be proved to be undiscoverable. You will have millions---"
"But leave us bread to eat meanwhile", pleaded Marguerite.
--from "The Quest of the Absolute."
Three fables by Balzac, none of them his best work, but all interesting to some degree. the longest one, "The Quest of the Absolute" centers around a scientist who wastes his fortune and his whole life doing experiments to create the "philosopher's stone", always on the verge of what surely will be the amazing breakthrough if only he can borrow yet more money, while his loyal but anguished family weeps. I imagined Mitt Romney's heirs having similar thoughts a few years back, as they watched their inheritance wasted on the most expensive mid-life crisis in modern history. "Melmouth" is a coda to RP Maturin's tale of a man doomed to wander after selling his soul; in Balzac's version, the unholy contract ends up being bought and sold on the stock exchange; while "Seraphita" is more of a churchy sermon about a saintly Swedish woman preparing to ascend, that will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about Emmanuel Swedenborg.
Backstabbed in Baltimore: The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler
"If you really think that, then you're fooling yourself. You're not holding steady; you're ossified. You're encased. You're like something in a capsule. You're a dried up kernel of a man that nothing really penetrates. Oh, Macon, it's not by chance you write those silly books telling people how to take trips without a jolt. That traveling armchair isn't just your logo; it's you."
The statement quoted above is said to a grieving man who cannot be consoled over the completely random shooting death of his son a full year after the event, who cannot bring himself to part with the child's destructive dog because it reminds him of the boy. It is said to him by his wife, who wants a divorce rather than stay married to someone who doesn't adjust to gut-wrenching change easily. It is one of the cruelest moments in a book full of cruel moments, and yet the book jacket describes The Accidental Tourist as a comedy, a tribute to the wonderful nuttiness in the human condition. The man breaks his leg in a weird accident, and the laugh track goes wild. the dog bites people, threatens to cost the man his job, and it's supposed to be funny.
I found it ableist and making fun of neurodivergent pain, the more painful the supposedly funnier.
The supposedly silly foibles of the protagonist are exemplified in the "accidental tourist" travel series the protagonist writes--with a winged armchair on the cover, and pointing out places around the world that most recreate American culture, for American travelers on business and so on, who didn't want to leave home and who want to eat Chef Boy Ar Dee in Italy. This is supposed to be humorously pathetic, an invitation to the reader to point and laugh at the philistines. I find it...understandable, and I find the way the protagonist and other "lovably crazy" people are treated by the "normals" infuriatingly condescending. Your mileage may vary, naturally, but it seems to me that if creature comforts give one pleasure, there's no shame in it, and there is shame in mocking it.
Star-Crossed Geniuses: All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
"You never learned the secret," said Roberta. "How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn't think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They're all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you've chosen to torture all of us instead. That's the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can't stand it when somebody else lets their crazy show. It's like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It's nothing personal."
This is the fifth Hugo-nominated novel of 2017 that I have read, and right after Cixin liu's masterwork described above was rocketed to the top of my list.
And then, Anders's book surpassed Liu and IT became my number one pick. We'll see later whether the sixth book, which is by last year's winner, will top even Anders. Honestly, this year's Hugo winners are the readers who get to go through such a varied and amazing feast of books.
Seems to me, while Cixin and Palmer have written heavy-duty intellectual books with fascinating original concepts, All the Birds in the Sky is not so much intellectual as smart, and very very playful. The story is--yes, there are dire consequences to the planet, but it is simple and centered around two people, Patricia and Laurence, who begin the tale as alienated children. HE is a science geek! SHE is a witch! THEY will huddle for comfort against the mundanes, will become opponents, maybe lovers, maybe save the world or end it---AND SOLVE CRIMES!
Anders writes sentences and plot situations that bring to my mind Tom Robbins, Sarah Vowell and Christopher Moore--three of my very favorite modern writers. Early situations involving Patricia and Laurence made me hurt in sympathy with my own adolescent baggage. Later buildup made me gasp, and the climax and resolution made me happycry.
Which is why I'm calling All the Birds in the Sky the best of the five hugo books i've read so far. Some of the others beat it out in some aspects, but it holds its own on just about all criteria...and it made me happycry. Books that make you happycry get to win, right?
Unspeakable Melodrama: Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, by Mary Shelley
"I expected this reception," said the daemon. "All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things! Yet you, my creator, detest and spurn me, thy creature, to whom thou art bound by ties only dissoulable by the annihilation of one of us. You purpose to kill me. How dare you sport thus with life? Do your duty towards me and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind. If you will comply with my conditions, I will leave them and you at peace, but if you refuse, I will glut the maw of death until it be satiated with the blood of your remaining friends."
Frankenstein is frequently listed as the first science fiction novel, and is probably the first work since Genesis to depict human life being created only to rise and fuck up everything. The story has been re-told and adapted so many times that reading it today seems both cliched ("Oh, i have created a MONSTER!") and deficient in tropes. There is no wild-eyed scientist, no Igor, no gothic castle full of Erlinmeyer flasks and lightning rods, no mob of peasants with torches and pitchforks. Victor Frankenstein is a misguided, educated gentleman who acts alone, and whose hellish experiment is here and over in a couple of pages so that we can get to the real story, which revolves around the consequences and emo fee-fees of both being a hideous thing hated by civilization and being Daddy to an out of control killing machine.
The story levels up and down from the narrative of a ship's captain who rescues Frankenstein off of an ice floe in the Northern Sea; Frankenstein's story told to the captain, and the creature's story as told to Frankenstein as told to the captain. The most touching and memorable part of the book is the creature's narrative, learning from books and hidden observation about the human world he longs to join but that rejects him at every turn, the subplot of the remote cottagers that the creature wants to help, the transition from an instinctive urge to love to the thirst to destroy it all out of revenge for rejection. Frankenstein, even by his own account, does very shabbily by his creation, and the dialogues between creator and created, the episodes of chasing and plotting against one another, are not the part that will stay with you long after reading.
And from that story, root and branch have gone forth into multiple genres, culminating so far in this year's amazing books by Cixin Liu and Charlie Jane Anders, and promising to go farther yet. From tiny acorns and all that.