Father of Frankenstein

by Christopher Bram

Overview

In 1957, James Whale, the director acclaimed for such classic gothic films as "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein," was found floating face-down in the swimming pool of his Hollywood mansion. Here, Christopher Bram brilliantly recreates Whale's last days in this fascinating, astute, and suspenseful novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780452273375
Publisher:	Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
Publication date:	04/01/1996
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.38(w) x 7.94(h) x 0.76(d)

What People are Saying About This

Peter Straub

A fine novel…pointed, wry, observant, and wise. I virtually inhaled it in a single reading.

Tony Kushner

Bram is one of the best novelists writing in the world today.

Editorial Reviews

In this ingeniously imagined novel, Bram (Hold Tight) makes fiction out of the aged expatriate British filmmaker James Whale's last days. Whale, living in Hollywood and recovering from a minor stroke, finds life grotesquely refracted through his greatest creation, "Frankenstein" starring Boris Karloff, and its campy sequel, "The Bride of Frankenstein." His mind is a cutting room-floor jumble of olfactory hallucinations, nightmares and flashbacks to his working-class childhood, the sets of his horror movies and the gore-muddied trenches of WWI. Meanwhile, like unwitting furies, a sycophantic film student and Whale's ex-Marine gardener, Clay Boone, churn up his past and impel him to scheme a suitable grand finale for himself. In a wickedly disconcerting series of scenes, Whale directs a mad plot around the short-fused Clay, who, attracted by Whale's old Hollywood glamour but creeped out by his homosexuality, vaguely wants to extract the experience of a lifetime out of the famous figure-"combat, a love affair, a harrowing adventure, even a crime.'' With amusing cameos by Elsa Lanchester, Greta Garbo and George Cukor, Bram cleverly mines his material's potential from nostalgia and comedy to the grimmer secrets of carnal and charnel knowledge.

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly