Gods and Monsters aka Father of Frankenstein - Christopher Bram

Written by Christopher Bram
Read by Joe Barrett
Format: MP3
Unabridged

Gods And Monsters climaxes with a body floating face down in a swimming pool, that familiar symbol of the fatal lure and excess of Hollywood. The events that lead to this tragedy are a fugue-like journey through the memories of a forgotten master of cinema, as the story flits from James Whale’s Hollywood success, his grim upbringing in North England, and his deteriorating grasp on the present.

Christopher Bram’s book (originally titled Father of Frankenstein) is an elegant work in which the darker themes are counterbalanced with light, often comic touches, including cameos from Charles Laughton, Greta Garbo, and Tallulah Bankhead. But the motif at the heart of the story is how people make monsters of their past, and Bram links Whale’s iconic horror films to his long-buried background. He makes the claim for the films as shards of autobiography, psychological inner portraits, and this deliberate confusing of the films and fact is embedded into the narrative itself: Several chapters begin in the unmistakeable style of exterior-establishing script directions. (”Night. Rain. A hissing of wind, lightning strikes.”)

Joe Barrett brings a seriousness to the experience which works in the story‘s favor — what could read as mannered or brittle on page becomes something a little more everyman. James Whale may well be the main character, but Barrett seems closer in temperament to Clayton Boone, the awkward gardener looking for “a great drama that would take him out of his dead-end life and justify his existence”. An added bonus: Just at the very edge of Barrett’s voice is the familiar tone of movie-trailer voiceovers, that gravelly earnestness promising violent explosions, but tempered here by a gentler compassion, as Boone chooses not to be Whale’s monster who destroys his creator, but instead chooses the other path suggested by the book’s title. —Dafydd Phillips

Publisher’s summary
Previously titled Father of Frankenstein, this acclaimed novel was the basis for the 1998 film starring Sir Ian McKellen, Lynn Redgrave, and Brendan Fraser. It journeys back to 1957 Los Angeles, where James Whale, the once-famous director of such classics as Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein, is living in retirement, haunted by his past. Rescuing him from his too-vivid imagination is his gardener, a handsome ex-marine. The friendship between these two very different men is sometimes tentative, sometimes touching, often dangerous - and always captivating.