New Zealand Listener – June 01, 2019

Part one of the book ends with Dead

Papa walking through the village, “whis-

tling his dream into being”. He slides

into homes via the plumbing to listen.

Part two slides between unnamed

characters, and feverishly plays with

perspectives. Lanny goes missing, and

LU

CY

D

IC

KE

NS

light on modern problems. Frankissstein

alternates two storylines. The first is a

fictional account of the 1816 summer

Mary and Percy Shelley spent at Lake

Geneva with Lord Byron, his mistress

and his physician, notorious at the time

for its reported sexual promiscuity. This

was, of course, when Mary conceived

the premise of what became her 1818

novel Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus,

published when she was just 20.

Winterson recounts the story from

Mary’s point of view, giving us a pic-

ture of an iconoclastic young woman

who understands the foibles of those

around her, particularly Byron. The

atmosphere, made darkly surreal by the

rain and copious alcohol, is masterfully

evoked, and despite the odd, unnecessary

injection of factual information, Mary’s

story of becoming a creative individual

in her own right is both gripping and

convincing.

Less successful is the second storyline.

Set in the present, it opens at a robotics

expo in Memphis, Tennessee. This time,

our protagonist is trans gender doctor Ry

Shelley, and all the other characters are

modern takes on those from 1816. They

include Ron Lord, a wide-boy sex-bot

creator, and Victor Stein, an artificial-

intelligence expert who has many secrets,

including some he’s buried underground.

Unlike the first part, the second seems

tonally off. It has many funny moments

• Lord’s sex-bot sales pitch is tremendous:
  “Amazing! Like a Brompton bicycle!” But
  mostly, it’s too much of a spoof for us to
  engage fully with the characters, and the
  valid points about what makes us human
  are lost because they’re hammered home
  with a squeaky rubber joke mallet. The
  climax and its denouement have all the
  subtle horror of a Scooby-Doo cartoon.
  Which is a shame, because Winterson
  is a terrific writer with a formidable intel-
  ligence. If she had sustained even some
  of the mood and
  dignity of the first
  storyline through-
  out, this novel
  would be, pardon
  the pun, frankly
  superb. l
  FRANKISSSTEIN, by
  Jeanette Winterson
  ($35, Jonathan Cape)

Ron Lord’s sex-bot sales

pitch is tremendous:

“Amazing! Like a

Brompton bicycle!”

Porter’s navigation of Jolie’s shock and

grief is raw. Predictably, ugliness quickly

fouls this parasitical little community.

The village gaze falls on Pete as a suspect

and sympathy for Lanny’s loss turns into

malicious gossip.

Part three takes on a hallucinogenic

hue with Dead Papa offering Pete and

Lanny’s parents a chance to decide the

boy’s fate.

Porter prefaces the book with

lines from Welsh poet Lynette Roberts,

opening with, “Peace, my stranger is a

tree ... it releases peace, peace of mind.”

It’s one code for

interpreting the

strange, mystical

events enveloping

Lanny and his family

in this potent ode to

the healing powers of

nature. l

LANNY, by Max Porter

(Faber & Faber, $29.99)

A FILM BY KLAUS HARO

IF YOU LIKED THE HUNDRED YEAR-OLD

MAN WHO CLIMBED OUT OF

THE WINDOW AND DISAPPEARED OR

WOMAN IN GOLD YOU WILL LOVE

ONE LAST DEAL

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mmaaayy 300

A charming old fashioned

heart-warmer

M: OFFENSIVE LANGUAGE.