October 24, 2014
Genres: Fiction, Classics
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
Critics consider The Last Man is Mary Shelley‘s most important novel after Frankenstein. Since I read Frankenstein, a few months back, my obsession with the author’s writing style grew and I wanted to gradually examine Shelley’s writing by reading her other works.Thus, I picked this 500 pages long novel that explores similar thematic concerns as in Frankenstein, though from a vastly different perspective. The nightmarish story envisions the end of humanity from a ruthless and inescapable plague. Full of heart-wrenching loss, The Last Man tests the resilience of humanity, as well as its capacity for sorrow and grief.
The storytelling starts at the constant node following the timeline in a similar manner though sometimes, with deep descriptive instances, somewhere it does feel a dragging and one might feel tempt to rush through it. These instances occur only a few number of times most notably when Shelley often passed over the moments of action or character growth with a short summary, but that certainly never affects her descriptions of places or emotional states. Rest of the book does leave a similar impact on a reader as Frankenstein (only, if you have read Frankenstein). Like many other Victorian authors, Shelley felt no need to rush the plot along, nor to curtail her flood of words. Luckily, she backed them up with ideas and feelings, so it was not merely the empty deluge of words. (more…)
