One of her top ten books about loneliness, as shared at Publishers Weekly:
Frankenstein by Mary ShelleyRead about another entry on the list.
Books about loneliness often involve monsters, the only one of their kind, hideous and unlovable (The Tempest's Caliban is another example). Who is sadder or more alone than Frankenstein's Creature, unloved even by the man who made him? The Creature only turns to violence when he realises he is absolutely despised by those he encounters – worse, that he is sexually undesirable, romantically beyond the pale. It's hard to think of a more powerful invocation of loneliness than the final pages, as he leaps from the window of the boat and is "borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance."
Frankenstein is among Helen Humphreys's top ten books on grieving, John Mullan's ten best honeymoons in literature, Adam Roberts's five top science fiction classics and Andrew Crumey's top ten novels that predicted the future.
--Marshal Zeringue
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