BOOKS:
JEANETTE WINTERSON, MORE.
FRANKISSTEIN: A LOVE STORY by Jeanette Winterson
Winterson is in top form with her new novel, using Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein as a device to explore contemporary issues of artificial intelligence and remaking the human body.
There are two main narrative strands: the first focuses on Mary, her husband Shelley, Lord Byron and their circle, and how Frankenstein came to be written. These chapters are atmospheric and captivating but also explore the limitations society imposes on women and the struggles Mary endures.
This section comes to a remarkable climax when Mary meets the daughter of Byron and her step-sister Claire. Taken from her mother and deposited at a convent, Ada Lovelace has risen to fame as a mathematician. Astonishingly, she has even devised an early computer.
This is complemented by a contemporary storyline that reflects these characters: Doctor Ry Shelley is a trans man, previously known as Mary, who becomes entangled with Victor Stein, a charismatic professor and leader in AI who has ambitious and unsettling ideas for the future.
Ron Lord (Byron) is a businessman with a blunt way with words and a thriving sex bot business. He produces an array of female models from a “no frills, budget fuck” through to the deluxe model featuring real hair (on her head) and a vocabulary of 200 words.
Ron has steered clear of male models as the male thrust is too complex to engineer, although, he later realises, there’s potential for passive male sex bots. This direction is inspired when he teams up with Claire, an evangelical Christian, who persuades him to produce “the Christian Companion,” a more demure model in wardrobe and breast size who “the missionary, the widower, the boy tempted by the flesh” could fuck.
Frankisstein is brimming with ideas and is Winterson’s funniest book in decades.
Her debut, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit demonstrated a wicked wit at the expense of Christianity, and we see this exercised again.
LEADING MEN By Christopher Castellani
This alternative history novel is based on Tennessee Williams’ long-term partner, Frank Merlo who is the central character. Other reallife people are prominent in the novel including Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, Anna Magnani and the now obscure writer John Horne Burns and his lover Sandro Nencini. The other major character, actress and muse Anja Bloom, is an invention of the author.
Merlo was a working-class Italian from New Jersey who met Williams soon after his triumph with A Streetcar Named Desire. Interestingly, Williams wrote most of his major works during his “Frankie years”. After Frank’s death, he sank into depression and failed to write another great play.
The novel imagines that he wrote a short, final play, which he entrusted to Anja Bloom, an arthouse film darling and recluse a la Greta Garbo. Anja is befriended by Sandro Nencini’s son, who learns about the play and tries to persuade her to produce it. The play is a tribute to Frank, who Tennessee had abandoned and failed to visit when he was dying of lung cancer.
This narrative comes to a surprising and very satisfying climax, but it is utterly eclipsed by the 1950s sections of the novel, which is magnificently atmospheric and captivating.
MURMUR By Will Eaves
This novel is inspired by the arrest and punishment of Alan Turing, renowned for his code-breaking achievements during WWII. Back in 1952, however, this all remained confidential, bound by the Official Secrets Act.
In the novel, Turing picks up a young man from a fairground for sex. This encounter led to a break-in and theft at Turing’s home by one of the man’s mates. Turing then made the mistake of involving the police. The thief revealed the “business” that went on, and Turing ending up being charged for gross indecency and sentenced to chemical castration.
The opening part of the novel that outlines this narrative is enthralling, however, the part that follows takes a literary leap, which may leave some readers grasping to understand. This part consists of writings by Turing that he has been encouraged to do by the psychoanalyst he is obliged to meet with.
In these “dream narratives” it’s immediately obvious that the names of the real-life people have been changed. Turing is now called Alec Pryor and Joan Clarke (who was once Turing’s fiancé) is now June. Once that is established, the narrative is easier to follow.
Murmur was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2018, Wellcome Book Prize 2019 and James Tait Black Prize 2019 as well as earning a longlisting for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2019 and many newspaper Book Of The Year accolades. It went on to win the Wellcome Book Prize.