Double Trouble: Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson, Real Life by Brandon Taylor

I am beginning 2022 with a double review, having managed to fit in two novels dealing with bodies, queerness and the Other. Both are vastly different in their specific focus and even more so in style, but as my last two reads of 2021 there seemed to be some serendipitous threads of similarity which is why I have combined the two here- Jeanette Winterson’s chaotically futuristic 2019 novel Frankissstein and Brandon Taylor’s brooding, bodily, realist campus novel Real Life, from 2020.

My Body and Your Discontents

The main intertextual link is that both novels capture the violence, trauma and territorial conflict of the Othered body; in Frankissstein, a transgender doctor named Ry Shelley has undergone surgery and hormone therapy is seemingly content in their body until the experience of rape by a stranger and an imbalanced, fetishistic relationship with “Victor Stein” unveils a more complex, dualistic experience of the body and gender - one in which the body is repeatedly made and remade by the gaze, fears and ideologies of those who encounter Ry. Victor in particular sees Ry’s body not as a truer expression of their gender but as a hybrid body showcasing the human potential to merge with technology, a body that is designed for and fulfils the desired function of the owner and its society. For Victor their body is a step towards a new type of human, but this vision sees Ry sidelined in their own body-narrative. In Real Life, the body of a black gay man repeatedly becomes a site of violence; as the novel progresses a flashback reveals that the repeated seeking of violence, both emotional and physical, by the protagonist Wallace is actually a return to an early trauma. His rape as a child teaches Wallace to fill himself with the pain of sexual violence as a way of anchoring himself in the real and the now, rather than being swallowed by the lapping waves of memory or tortured by the failings of a language that is yet to provide adequate means to express this trauma.

Frankissstein - Chaotic Charm

As an essayist and memoirist, Winterson is renowned for her insight as something of a technological and sexual soothsayer - connecting overarching themes picked out deftly from culture and discourse and knitting them into something whole. These gymnastic connections of history, culture and theory are attempted here in Frankissstein; the triple threads of a fictional history of Mary Shelley’s writing, the speculative narrative of Victor Stein and Ry Shelley, tech-god CEO type and contemporary Burke and Hare doctor respectively, and the final, most ill-defined strand of Victor Frankenstein himself in Bedlam.

The joy of Winterson’s writing is also this novel’s undoing; Winterson’s desire to say so much about love, bodies, technology and history mean the structure, experimental in its own way, renders the novel nebulous and unsatisfactory. Least satisfying of all is the presentation of the trans body - although Winterson’s exploration here is laudable and from a place of love, the underlying suggestion that Ry’s body and the futuristic “creature” that Victor Stein creates are somehow connected is a troubling and somewhat dehumanising thread - an unhappy link generated from the chaotic structure.

You(r violence) Makes Me Feel Mighty Real

Much less ambitious in its form but equally thought provoking is Taylor’s Booker-longlisted debut, Real Life, which traces a disastrous weekend between a group of “friends” who live and work together as postgraduate scientists in Washington, and is narrated through the lens of depressed outsider Wallace. The text is something of a contemporary society novel - whilst I think Taylor sought to write Virginia Woolf’s campus novel, the interpersonal dramas are more akin to that of Bronte and Austen. Real Life is a novel that lingers long in the mind, much like the touch of Miller, our protagonist’s friend and new lover for the weekend.

If the novel is an exploration of the “real” - both in its very nature and in the possibilities of capturing it in prose, then Taylor’s reality is a bleak one. There are no redeemable characters; Wallace, despite the brutality of the acts against him (or because of them) is selfish, jealous and bitter. Miller’s closeted homosexuality at first adds a more interesting dimension to this gruff, brooding jock-like character, as his tenderness is demonstrated in his gestures to Wallace, but he quickly descends into a pathetic figure who oscillates between boyish naivete and violent hypermasculinity. The entire campus cohort are self-centred, jealous and catty - only the sarcastically warm Bridget, reminiscent of Stevie from Schitt's Creek, is likeable - but despite her efforts even her conciliatory language cannot reach Wallace’s pain.

The reader’s distance from the cast of characters makes more sense as Wallace’s depression comes sharply into view, and the motifs of water and birds help weave a deeper, intertextual quality. The opening scene describes the middle-class weekend gamboling of D.C’s white populace as “seagulls”, dive-bombing Wallace’s psyche, evoking Tennessee William’s psychosexual climax in “Suddenly Last Summer”, and as Wallace further examines his sexual identity, this link becomes all the more illuminating.

Images of water, both haunting and comforting, make another link to Woolf’s canon and particularly To the Lighthouse. In both texts water has the ability to both soothe and isolate, but in Real Life its sensory qualities give it the symbolic status of memory itself, recalling the origin of Wallace’s trauma and, in the final scenes, bringing Wallace into its grip in the aftermath of a violent sexual encounter with Miller.

Both novels are certainly worth a read- I found Winterson’s writing more joyful and witty, and it shared some of the political erudition and joyous wordplay of Ali Smith’s recent work, which appealed to me greatly - there is something very British in a wonderfully contemporary way about both these writers which brings hope for a culture that can sometimes feel is being eroded. Brandon Taylor’s debut certainly seems to set him up as a new writer to watch out for and I hope to see more from him in the future!