The Father of Frankenstein
This novel--the basis for the critically acclaimed 1998 filmGods 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,FrankensteinandBride 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 Frankensteinis a powerful evocation of an era before Hollywood celebrities could proclaim anything but domestic heterosexuality to the outside world.