Team Monster

Charlotte Gordon picks her side, and says so. The real plot twist of Frankenstein, she argues, is not the creation of the creature but the abandonment of him, a father walking out on his child in the first hour of its life. In the grieving house at Geneva she finds the book's only reliable truth-tellers, Elizabeth and Justine, both ignored. And on the sea of ice, where maker and made finally stand face to face, she watches the abandoned child out-argue, out-feel, and out-parent his father. The creature asks for a hearing. Gordon gives him hers.