The Invisible Man
H. G. Wells
Public Domain Books
Fiction, Sci-Fi
Themes: Classics, Medicine
***
Description
A strange figure, bundled head to toe, arrives in a small English inn, quickly creating a stir with his blunt, antisocial manners and peculiar scientific instruments, with which he sequesters himself day and night while flying into wild rages. Is he a vivisectionist, a victim of some horrendous accident, or something more sinister? Much as the local tongues wag, none can guess the horrible truth, the terrible and tragic tale concealed by glove and hat-brim and bandages... the truth of a man felled by his own greatest triumph.
Review
Yes, it was free on Kindle... many classics appear to be, which is rather convenient for those of us who skirted such staples in our misspent youth. (Not
that I regret a moment spent buried in my Choose Your Own Adventure books, mind you... Oh, how many different adventures dwelt within those hallowed
pages. Never the same story twice!)
Where was I?
Oh, yes - I was implying the existence of a review rather than outright giving one. It may seem a cheap padding device to boost word count, but evidently it
was a legitimate writing style for H. G. Wells; the book would've been half as long (if not shorter) had it focused on actual events, and not irrelevent
sidetracks. A great many people, places, and things of minimal importance receive ample paragraphs of description, while the main plot mostly stagnates until
close to the halfway point. One entire chapter exists to describe a man who simply watches the Invisible Man pass by; if that doesn't constitute gratuitous
padding, I don't know what does. I might not have minded so much, except so many of those peripheral people were caricatures along the lines of the Keystone
Kops, ignorant yokels with slapstick sensibilities whose antics only needed a little goofy incidental music to transform into cartoons. Even after the
Invisible Man is revealed to be invisible - a revelation far too long in coming, especially as the title was something of a spoiler in that regard - the story
scarcely develops enough momentum to clear the ground, though by the end it picks up to a satisfyingly brisk pace. Between copious clumps of padding, a tragic
tale of a failed genius turned mad by the achievment of his heart's desire can be glimpsed. Unfortunately, those glimpses came too late to salvage this one in
the ratings. It was just too much slogging and too little actual story. To be frank, I only justified an Okay rating out of deference to the age of the book,
and thus the unfamiliar cultural mindset of the man who wrote it.