The Literary Monster on Film : Five Nineteenth Century British Novels and Their Cinematic Adaptations.

This volume could be used in conjunction with an introductory class on film adaptation or even literature. In the introduction, Bloom (Victorian literature, Hunter College and The New School) provides brief overviews of the 19th century and the horror genre and sets up her analytical process, explaining that she used the same criteria to examine each work and its adaptations. She takes on Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, H. Rider Haggard's She, H. G. Wells's The Island of Dr. Moreau, and Bram Stoker's Dracula. The text is jargon free and so will be easily understood by readers with no background in film studies. The discussions of Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dracula are solid, but likely too basic for those already familiar with them. But Bloom's discussions of the two less-known works, She and The Island of Dr. Moreau, provide information that will be new and interesting to any reader. Though many scholars have gone into much more depth in looking at adaptations of Frankenstein and Dracula, this volume serves the purpose of teaching readers a simple, effective way to approach both a literary text and its film adaptations. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers. L. J. Larson Our Lady of the Lake University