I really am an utter plonker. I wrote this review in May, 2014. I've just been scrolling through the Eclectic Electric archives and found it here still in draft. How could I have forgotten to press 'publish'? Well, as I hope I make clear below, this review is of a book I admire greatly and I'm really quite upset that this review didn't appear, entirely through my own carelessness. When I say 'kept in our minds' in the next paragraph I mean what I say, because it's a book which should last and last. So here is the review at last, exactly three years after the day that it should have appeared.
A few weeks ago (plus two years), Mari Biella blogged on Authors Electric asking for examples of new 'gothic' novels and Chris Longmuir suggested The Frankenstein Inheritance as the sort of book she was looking for. The reference reminded me of that terrific story and how I had reviewed it last year ( or four years ago!) for Cally Phillips's Independent Ebook Review. Well, I think that Simon Cheshire's remarkable gothic fantasy should be kept in our minds for the super book it is, so I'm recycling and rewriting that original review, hoping it may jog people's memories and lead them to a brilliant reading experience, especially considering that when I looked at the book's Amazon page I saw its truly horrific best-seller ranking.
A few weeks ago (plus two years), Mari Biella blogged on Authors Electric asking for examples of new 'gothic' novels and Chris Longmuir suggested The Frankenstein Inheritance as the sort of book she was looking for. The reference reminded me of that terrific story and how I had reviewed it last year ( or four years ago!) for Cally Phillips's Independent Ebook Review. Well, I think that Simon Cheshire's remarkable gothic fantasy should be kept in our minds for the super book it is, so I'm recycling and rewriting that original review, hoping it may jog people's memories and lead them to a brilliant reading experience, especially considering that when I looked at the book's Amazon page I saw its truly horrific best-seller ranking.
It is 1879. Professor Marchbanks
arrives at Charing Cross station having just travelled from Europe. He is very
afraid. He is accompanied by two
children, incongruously named Victoria and Albert. There is something strange about them. They have pale, waxy, unnatural-seeming skin,
piercing, needle-sharp eyes, strange fissures and what looks like stitching on
their heads and necks. They are alarmingly intelligent but remember nothing
which happened more than a few days before.
They are also extremely strong: Albert even rescues some children from
drowning with extraordinary presence of mind and daring within a few minutes of
leaving the train.
Thus starts a gothic thriller, full of the special darkness which
only Victorian London can give, involving horror, some particularly nasty deaths,
a chase across the stews and teeming streets of the East End as it once was – Jack
the Ripper country. The pace is
breakneck, the tension taut like a bowstring.
A terrific read in its own right.
I devoured it at a sitting.
But there’s more. Underneath
its pastiche (though I don’t like using that word because it seems to cheapen
the whole) is a serious debate. Simon
Cheshire is well aware of the literary tradition, the way the central image of
Mary Shelley’s novel galvanised a whole genre as well as raising just about the
most serious possibility which could ever face the human race.
Many writers and, of course, film directors have revelled in the story’s horror and sensationalism (after all, it took the gothic and romantic to a new level) and are oblivious to its ethical and societal implications. Cheshire understands how a later generation could realise what power Victor’s discovery might lead to in an industrial, capitalist society. Technology and money meet in an unholy alliance which adumbrates the modern age: Wolfgang’s ambitions, which forecast contemporary debates about the ethics of medicine in prolonging and even perfecting life, are suddenly given shape by his realisation of the power of money and the tentacles of Victorian finance. They have emerged from Romantic fantasy, entered the real world and become inestimably more dangerous.
Many writers and, of course, film directors have revelled in the story’s horror and sensationalism (after all, it took the gothic and romantic to a new level) and are oblivious to its ethical and societal implications. Cheshire understands how a later generation could realise what power Victor’s discovery might lead to in an industrial, capitalist society. Technology and money meet in an unholy alliance which adumbrates the modern age: Wolfgang’s ambitions, which forecast contemporary debates about the ethics of medicine in prolonging and even perfecting life, are suddenly given shape by his realisation of the power of money and the tentacles of Victorian finance. They have emerged from Romantic fantasy, entered the real world and become inestimably more dangerous.
Simon Cheshire has made his writing reputation through humour. But there’s not much to laugh about
here. Nevertheless, cheerfulness does
keep breaking through. The climax of the
novel, Wolfgang’s demonstration of his discovery to the most select members of
Victorian society, takes place on the premises of a rather shady pharmaceutical
firm on the brink of bankruptcy and desperate for the one blinding
transformative success - Phage and Blight Ltd.
Cheshire has a Dickensian talent for surnames. These, especially the second, help to suggest
that, though the consequences of this occasion are horrific and serious, it is shot through with a
thread of black humour.
Perhaps, however, the most impressive feature of the novel is the
very one over which Mary Shelley agonised most.
What can the place of Victoria and Albert be in human society? In Cheshire’s story, they perform wonders. They are fiercely loyal, especially to
Professor Marchbanks. They have special and entirely benign powers. They are instrumental in destroying their maker. It would be easy for them to die in the
attempt: we could feel sad for a while and then erase the implications from our minds. But Cheshire's solution is far more subtle. It involves a character with
another Dickensian name: Inspector Goodley, who shares with Wilkie Collins’s
Sergeant Cuff the distinction of being one of the few policemen in the fictional Victorian world who is both intelligent and a force for good. Once
again, the implications of a moral difficulty are not shirked.
So – a page-turner which can be read as merely terrific
entertainment and also a narrative which deals seriously with issues still current
today. But there’s more. Earlier, I used the word ‘pastiche.’ Well, it is: an imitation, a modern presentation of the
language and conventions of a particular sort of nineteenth-century literature.
However, to work at all, pastiche must be done well. Writing it successfully demands a deep literary
understanding. Just to check my
instincts about this book, I reread the opening pages of, next to Mary Shelley,
the other great peak of nineteenth century gothic writing, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, that bewildering mixture of
genius and prejudice. Jonathan Harker’s
account of his journey to and escape from Dracula’s castle, with its peculiar
first-person tension between paranoid dread and detached exactitude of
observation, is echoed with great force in Professor Marchbanks’s opening account. And more: Stoker’s novel is a complex
construction of multiple viewpoints: diaries, letters, articles, newspaper reports, reminiscent
accounts, all maintaining the hectic pace without sacrificing his eye for detail. Cheshire’s method, though on a much smaller
scale, is very similar and has the same effect.
So the Victorian horror/crime/supernatural novel lives on. The Quickening and Pietra, both by Mari Biella, are good examples, as are Susan Hill’s ghost stories, Eleanor Updale’s Montmorency novels and Philip Pullman’s
Sally Lockhart series. These are all
very fine writers; in their hands, pastiche is more than imitation, more even
than homage. It’s a living tradition
with a lot more mileage left in it. The Frankenstein
Inheritance is a great addition to a genre which won't die quietly.
The Frankenstein Inheritance is available on Kindle and also as a paperback published independently by Simon Cheshire: ISBN 978 095650495
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