Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Brook Tsai (2022) 296 pages
"Unwieldy Creatures, a biracial, queer, gender-swapped retelling of Mary Shelley's classic novel Frankenstein, follows the story of three beings who all navigate life from the margins." So starts the synopsis that caught my interest. I love the cultural influence Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has had, but it was a novel I didn't finish in high school. I made slow progress through this retelling. The style and method of three people telling us the story is very similar to how Shelley's novel is presented. Dr. Z's dangerous ambition takes up the most pages. Plum, the protege, commands considerably fewer pages. And Ash, the creature, only shares their voice briefly toward the end. Tsai includes some bilingualism with Mandarin characters in Plum's story, so I had to flip to the end of the chapters for translation footnotes. The author also lifts some sentences straight from the original Frankenstein novel. The story is set now, or in the near future, so the science is more up-to-date involving in vitro gestation. However, there are still plot holes that didn't totally make sense to me. I'm glad this version exists. The rejection faced by some queer people from their families is a theme that fits well in this "creature feature" framework. Themes of estranged parents and children still resonate in this context. Tsai writes like the Romantic writers of Mary Shelley's era, and this is the part I struggled with the most. There is a lack of energy moving the plot along in the later part of this book.
