Jeanette Winterson Frankissstein: A Love Story

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Jeanette Winterson Frankissstein. Photo by Christopher Ho/KCRW

Jeanette Winterson’s Frankissstein: A Love Story is about time travel and body travel. It moves from writers scaring each other with stories on a night in 1816, into the present day, with Mary Shelley becoming trans doctor Dr. Ry, and Lord Byron becoming a manufacturer of sex bots, Ron Lord. Byron’s mistress, Mary’s stepsister, Clair, now evangelical Claire, first considers sexbots Satansim, then views them as ideal for clergies. And Victor Frankenstein is Victor Stein, studying AI in an underground city lab. Other lives and other situations in a new generation, the topic is the same as in Frankenstein: what does it mean to have a soul, and do humans always turn their dreams into nightmares? But this is not a scary book, it is a hugely comedic fantasia.

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