FRANKISSSTEIN

Winterson is always dazzling, and this ambitious novel is no exception. Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein, is in Italy with her husband the poet Shelley, his friend Lord Byron, and his half-sister Claire. Mary is working on her iconic story of the monster that comes to life and meanwhile in the present, Trans man Dr Mary Shelley, now known as Ry, who is a doctor specialising in amputations, flies out to Memphis for the Global Tec-X-Po on Robotics. Struggling with his own identity and the negative reactions of those he encounters, he is following in the footsteps of his 19th century namesake investigating the possibilities and limits of AI. First up he meets religious fanatic Claire, who points out that angels too are disembodied intelligences, then Shelley's first interviewee is Ron Lord, a manufacturer of sex dolls who is only too happy to describe in graphic details what exactly men expect from their compliant plastic robot. Ry learns that Ron does not do boy-bots because they are too big for a woman to cram into a Renault Twingo, whereas the girl-bots are tastefully petite and come with a spare head because sex can sometimes get rough. The conference speaker, Victor Stein, is trying to teach robots to diagnose illnesses based on the body parts supplied by Ry. When Polly the journalist from Vanity Fair wants to interview Ry because "Trans is hot right now", Ry ripostes "It's not a fashion choice, right?". But Polly is also seriously worried about an AI takeover. 346pp.