Frankenstein (AD Classic) - Mary Shelley

Victor Frankenstein is consumed by his desire to discover the secrets of life. After several years of research, Victor feverishly constructs a man out of old body parts and brings him to life. Victor is immediately horrified by his ambitious creation, and flees his apartment in remorse. The newborn monster disappears from Frankenstein's laboratory and enters the world as an outcast, struggling with his own identity. What follows is a gripping tale of murder, injustice, and revenge. Since 1818 Frankenstein has been associated with scientists who are consumed with their experiments, and oblivious to the repercussions. Among them are the brains behind the nuclear arms race, scientists who create super bacteria, and laboratories that experiment with artificial black holes. But most notably is the area of science devoted to gene manipulation, both in genetically modified foods and human cloning. Frankenstein has much to teach us in a world where we constantly test the limits of science and human ambition.
Frankenstein, loved by many decades of readers and praised by such eminent literary critics as Harold Bloom, seems hardly to need a recommendation. If you haven't read it recently, though, you may not remember the sweeping force of the prose, the grotesque, surreal imagery, and the multilayered doppelgänger themes of Mary Shelley's masterpiece. As fantasy writer Jane Yolen writes of this (the reviewer's favorite) edition, "The strong black and whites of the main text [illustrations] are dark and brooding, with unremitting shadows and stark contrasts. But the central conversation with the monster--who owes nothing to the overused movie image … but is rather the novel's charnel-house composite--is where [Barry] Moser's illustrations show their greatest power ... The viewer can all but smell the powerful stench of the monster's breath as its words spill out across the page. Strong book-making for one of the world's strongest and most remarkable books." Includes an illuminating afterword by Joyce Carol Oates.