The image of an angel becomes itself an angel.

Of course Winterson's Frankenstein rewrite, like every other rewrite recently, becomes itself a Frankenstein; cobbled together from parts, part rewrite, part biography of the Shelleys and Byrons, of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage and Jack Good and Alan Turing, part summary of Bostrom and Tegmark and Hayles et al and her Facebook feed of current events. At least it's aware of it.

This is the dilemma, he replied. I do not know if I am the teller or the tale.

And yes, as Frankissstein acknowledges, there is really very little point to differentiating between the scientist and the creature anymore. Shelley became herself a creator, Victor Frankenstein himself a monster, the creature himself a concept.

I really really want to like Frankissstein more than I do. At its best it's brilliant; Winterson's fantastic prose straddling the line between high concept and intimate physicality, flitting back and forth in time between Villa Diodati in 1816 and the future (and both further back and further on). But somewhere around the fourth very long discussion on posthumanity and artificial intelligence that doesn't really lead anywhere, she starts to lose me. As if she wanted to write this story but, not unlike a certain mad scientist, hadn't prepared for what would happen when it came alive and she'd have to raise it until it could stand on its own. As with many "proper" writers writing science fiction (not that she's new to that, and she certainly manages better than many), she struggles to actually let the concepts lead anywhere new, leaves depths unplumbed; compared to, say, Louisa Hall's Speak, Frankissstein feels incomplete. And surprisingly, she fails to give some of her characters life beyond parody, her jabs at society's backwards slide more than sharply formulated tweets.

What is there to love is still very loveable. The Shelleys (all three of them), the prose, the questions, the never-ending gyre of love and creation and rebellion and mutuality and synthesis, and I'll gladly follow Winterson down that labyrinth even if I'm a bit disappointed in where I come out. I'd just been hopeing for a little more than