It Lives!: A Review of Frankenstein

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Frankenstein was an instant classic when published in 1818 and still holds a hallowed place in world literature. You can't have a serious discussion about scientific advancement in any field today without someone asking, "Are we making a Frankenstein's monster?" It's taken me awhile to get to this book myself, but after finally reading it, I must say that it lives up to the hype.

The novel, which follows the life of Victor Frankenstein and the monster he creates, is good. The basic plot, which you already know, is gripping and Mary Shelley really knew how to write a good sentence. Unlike many other books of 19th century literature, there isn't a whole lot of wasted space and this book is just as quick a read today as any other book of contemporary literature. Indeed, this may be one of the most readable books of classic literature you are likely to find and, I dare say, will still be readable 100 years from now.

That is not to say that this book is completely free of the 19th century tropes that have bogged down other classic literature. There is still the obligatory retelling of the main character's life from their birth to their very death, like with Jean Valjean in Les Misérables, and there is a lot of exposition, particularly when the monster begins to relate his own story. While the language is still very readable, it is still very flowery, with the same long-winded flourishes that you will find in other classic 19th century literature. In spite of that, this is still an incredibly tight story, mostly because of the overall story's shortness. I could imagine this book getting tedious were it 100 or 200 pages longer.

Frankenstein has survived and thrived in our cultural landscape not just because of the thematic elements that still haunt contemporary debates about nature, humanity, and science, but also because it is a darn good book. This is a book that will appeal to science fiction and horror fans, but is also a great seating point for classic literature.

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Love, Death and Other Messy Topics: A Review of The Other Americans

The Other Americans by Laila Lalami

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Life and love are messy and, sometimes, it takes the death of someone close to us to make us understand the beauty in the messiness. In this 2019 finalist for the National Book Award, Ms. Lalami explores themes of life, love, grief, and deferred dreams with a dash of 2019 racial politics thrown in.

Late one evening in the Mojave Desert, a Moroccan immigrant, Driss Guerraoui, is killed in a hit-and-run and his family are left without a father and husband. His daughter, a struggling musician named Nora, returns home to grieve with her family. Jeremy Gorecki, a local sheriff deputy and Iraq War veteran who has had a crush on Nora since high school, strikes up a relationship with her. And an undocumented immigrant, the only witness to Driss' death, weighs whether or not to tell the police what he saw. Other characters tell their own part in the story, including Driss, but to say more would give away to many details and I fear that this description may even give one the impression that this is a mystery or thriller. Although the mystery of Driss' death forms a kind of narrative spine to the novel, this is not a mystery or a thriller. Indeed, the book does not spend much time trying to solve the mystery. Instead, the book focuses mostly on Nora's grief, the growing relationship between Nora and Jeremy, and the complicated feelings Nora has for the rest of her family.

This is a slow novel and I mean that as a compliment. Although the climax of the book comes within the last 50-60 pages and most of the chapters are relatively short, at no point does this book feel rushed. Instead, there is a deliberate pacing where we see things from each of the POV characters' viewpoint. This allows the reader to feel more intimately connected with each character. Indeed, by the end of the novel, I admired almost every character and sympathized with their struggles. If you don't feel anything for these characters, you may need to have a doctor check you for a heart.

The only thing that keeps me from giving this book a full five stars is this one plot point having to do with Driss' recent past. When this piece of information about Driss is revealed about a third of the way through, it hits like a bombshell, exceeded only by the final missing clue from the hit-and-run. It is such a big reveal in such an early part of the book that I thought it would play a bigger role in the overall story and I wouldn't blame anyone else for thinking so. Instead, it is almost completely forgotten within 20-30 pages and doesn't resurface until the very end of the novel. It does fit in with Ms. Lalami's theme about the messiness of love and family, but I felt that it was too big of plot reveal to just leave by the wayside.

Though I am not one who usually reads contemporary fiction, this novel was a pleasure to read from beginning to end. Each character was drawn well and the plot moves at a slow, but deliberate, pace. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a good example of contemporary literature done right.

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National Shame: A Review of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thomas Jefferson once called the young United States of America an "Empire of liberty," first putting into words the idea that America had a destiny to spread freedom and democracy around the world. While the hypocrisy of that idea when juxtaposed against slavery and racial segregation, what is less known and even less understood is just how fraudulent such a phrase sounds to the Native Americans who inhabited the continent before the United States was even an idea. In this critical counterpoint to the historical narrative that most Americans know from school, Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz argues that the American project was always an imperialist policy of genocide against indigenous people in North America.

Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz starts this book with an introduction that is incredibly jarring as she uses the standard definition for genocide and applies that the colonial experience Native Americans have the U.S.'s expansion westward and beyond. It is an incredibly jarring start, one that, as a proud American, I was very taken aback by. However, with each chapter, Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz tells the history of America from Native Americans' perspective and it is hard to not see where she and others are coming from. By the end of this book, I came to a more full recognition of just how shameful America's past relations with Native Americans was and, in some ways, still is. Native Americans were pushed off their ancestral lands in a number of different ways, most often by squatting settlers, genocidal militias and Army troops. Once the Indians Wars were largely won, Native Americans were forced into boarding schools where their cultural identity was nearly erased (and too many children were sexually assaulted by missionaries and others) and their reservation lands were continually shrunk. Though some recent Supreme Court cases have begun to recognize Native Americans' claims, that has not always been the case and too many tribes are not allowed to return to their sacred lands, such as the Black Hills of the Dakotas. As much as slavery and racial segregation, America's treatment of Native Americans is another original sin of ours that has yet to be fully discussed and reconciled.

This book is not an easy book to get through. Like me, many Americans may find it difficult to square Dr. Dunbar-Ortiz's use of such terms as genocide, squatting, and others with the history of what we were taught in schools about America's unique past and destined place in the world. But, for those with an open mind and heart and a deep love of country and all those who live here, this is an incredibly necessary read. We must reconcile our nations past in order to have a brighter future. I highly recommend this book to all Americans who wish to see America begin that reconciliation process.

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