All through October, we’ll be sharing spooky reading recommendations from authors and staff. Whether it’s a horrifying contemporary work or a tell-tale classic, these selections are sure to haunt you for years to come. We spoke with Mary Kay Zuravleff, author of the Man Alive!, about her favorite HallowRead.
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is my Halloween pick. Mary Shelley had lost her mother as an infant and then, as a mother, had lost her first infant and her half-sister before she wrote this novel at the age of 18. Fear of losing your loved ones is the scariest fear there is. What if you create the monster that kills the people closest to you? Her “waking dream” of a doctor animating a man made from spare body parts turns into a bloodbath. The terror is bound up in pride, creativity, and guilt; but message and symbolism aside, there’s a real damn monster on the loose!
—Mary Kay Zuravleff