- Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Plume; Reprint edition (April 25 1996)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0452273374
- ISBN-13: 978-0452273375
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13.5 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,399,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
This novel--the basis for the critically acclaimed 1998 film Gods and Monsters--re-creates the last days of film director James Whale, who was found dead in his swimming pool, an apparent suicide, in 1957. Bram offers sharp insights into the darkly comic sensibility that infuses Whale's two most famous films, Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, as memories of an impoverished English childhood, the trenches of World War I, and Hollywood studios compete for space in a mind whose defenses have been weakened by a stroke. Written in the fluid present tense of a cinematic treatment, Father of Frankenstein is a powerful evocation of an era before Hollywood celebrities could proclaim anything but domestic heterosexuality to the outside world.
From Publishers Weekly
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.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Imaginative, Beautifully Written,
By Nelson Aspen "Author/Journalist" (Los Angeles & NYC, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Father Of Frankenstein (Mass Market Paperback)
This wonderful novel is instantly engrossing and will captivate readers throughout. An imaginative, fictional take on the life of film director James Whale, the author writes with uncanny objectivity, sensitivity and insight. Its exquisite detail and impact are hidden under the seeming simplicity but manage to ring out, chapter after chapter.Those familiar with the film version, "Gods and Monsters," will find a new appreciation not only for the story itself but for the filmmakers' loyalty to this great book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Father of Frankenstein,
By Ozbriefs "ozbriefs" (Eastmalvern, Victoria Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Father Of Frankenstein (Mass Market Paperback)
Christopher Bram does it again with yet another brilliant novel. The depth and the intelligence of this book and his ability to bring the characters so alive shows his ability as a novelist. If you only read one or a couple of books a year make it this one.Highly Recommended indeed.
3.0 out of 5 stars
I have to wonder.....,
By
This review is from: Father Of Frankenstein (Mass Market Paperback)
This is a fairly well written fiction about the last days of director James Whale. While it was able to hold my attention I wonder how Mr. Whale would have liked to be remebered as just a old man who's mind had melted away by a stroke, and a bit of a pervert for getting the hots for his very young gardner. While Mr. Whale, in real life, had no problems with anyone knowing his sexual prefrence; Who he really want people remembering him as the non functioning man of his later years? But it does a fine job of showing Whale the artist and truly talented man that he was. I would reoncmend this as a good read, for the informed.
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