A Monster`s Notes, Sheck Laurie

In a riveting mix of fact and poetic license, Laurie Sheck gives us the monster in his own words: recalling how he was made and how Victor Frankenstein abandoned him; pondering the tragic tale of the Shelleys and the intertwining of his life with Marys (whose fictionalized letters salt the narrative, along with those of her nineteenth-century intimates); taking notes on all aspects of human striving--from Gertrude Stein to robotics to the Northern explorers whose lonely quest mirrors his own--as he tries to understand the strange race that made yet shuns him, and to find his own freedom of mind.