Poor Things by Alasdair Gray

This is a totally bizarre book, and is a kind of postmodern play on every Gothic novel of the 19th century, plus the turn-of-the-century obsession with sex. It's funny, absurd, and unnerving, and has (like most good Gothic novels) several frame narratives. The central story is 'Episodes from the Early Life of a Scottish Public Health Officer', which relates the Frankenstein-like creation of the narrator's wife, Bella. Then comes a letter from the wife herself, who calls her husband a useless fool, and insists that he made it all up. But the book ends with Alasdair Gray (pretending to be the editor) telling the reader that medical facts confirm the husband's story. It's all very confusing. Bella starts out with a sort of childish innocence and determination to do good in the world, she's overwhelmed and becomes violent at being confronted by misery and poverty, desperate to do something about them. But as the story unfolds, her brain develops rapidly, and as she learns more and more, she has to adjust her desire to help people to the circumstances of the world, and I felt like she denies her husband's fantastic story because it doesn't fit in with the ordinary world, and she's determined to forget it, or has really forgotten it and made up an ordinary narrative to cover up the fantastic one. But I know that Alasdair Gray is famous for writing magical realism, so the two narratives might not actually be mutually exclusive. There's a lot towards the end about politics and Socialism, which I didn't really get, probably because my eyes glaze over as soon as I start hearing about it. I actually found this book overly optimistic (unusual for any prize-winning novel after 1900), it has a really positive attitude towards the future and seems to subscribe to the idea that children are somehow essentially good (Bella is a grown woman with a child's brain), while I think they're evil little devils.