Book Review: Frankenstein's Monster by JS Barnes

There's a VHS cover of a horror movie that I think about now and then. I don't remember the 3rd-rate horror movie (probably some kind of Friday the 13th rip-off) or the exact language, but it was an image of a letter that was in the process of being written, and it said something like "I'm kind of scared here at camp. I don't know, I feel really spooked. I think that...oh no, what's that? Who's walking towards me? Wait, he's got a knife! OH NOOOO!!!!"

This was the late 80s, I was a dumb kid looking at a horror movie VHS at the ShopRite video rental area, but even I could think "Why did you write all that?"

We're going to run into this issue a few times in JS Barnes' Frankenstein's Monster, a kinda-sorta sequel to the Mary Shelley classic. The story Barnes tells is...fine. But the way it's told is a bit of a problem.

You see, the person telling this story only appears at the very beginning and very end of the story. What he's doing is sharing a scrapbook with you - the very scrapbook that turned his father MAAAD decades ago. The scrapbook contains various diary and journal entries that are used to tell the cohesive story.

So now we come to the problem - using all these supposed confessionals to build suspense. If I were writing down something for the purpose of documenting strange events - or clearing my mind before I go MAAAD - I would never write a phrase like "But if I knew then what I know now, I would never have thought that," then not return to what you now know for another 28 pages. That's just not how journaling works.

I get the idea - I mean, the opening of Dracula is all diary entries. But here there's too much obvious writerly flourishes in what is supposed to be "found footage" writing.

So okay overall - six out of ten hot dogs.