When I was doing research into this classic before I read it, I came across a review on Goodreads that summed up the book pretty expertly saying, “This is the story of how one angry, naked, sneezing albino managed to terrorize the English countryside” and really, need I say more?
Ok, yes, a few more things: The Invisible Man by HG Wells had been on my shelf for some time. I picked it up at the same Scholastic book fair warehouse of awesomeness where I also purchased Dr. Franklin’s Island and Paperquake. I’ve always been drawn to the classics of literature but what really drew me to this one in particular was that it was unabridged and hadn’t been updated in any way which was something I feared might have taken place considering the book was being sold among YA novels galore before the big YA boom in literature, so everything was much more tame.
Source: https://www.123rf.com/photo_15506510_the-invisible-man-with-thumb-up.html
At just shy of 200 pages, The Invisible Man was one of my first adventures into sci-fi, if it qualifies for that genre, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As the review mentioned above, and the title indicate, the book revolves around a man who, already feeling invisible enough in the world as an albino, discovers a way to make himself actually, really real invisible.
During the time he’s invisible, he develops a cold – which actually adds a bit of humor to the story as he usually sneezes at the least opportune times. The reader also learns that the invisible man, Griffin, has quite a temper and gets super agitated with anyone who interrupts his research or really just gets in his way when he’s stealing things, you know, like those he’s stealing from. His anger is really what keeps him from getting the recognition for his discovery that he deserves because he uses his superpowers for mucho evil and decides he pretty much has no choice but to go on a killing spree (you know, what normal people just decide to do) but not before telling his buddy and former colleague Dr. Kemp who’s all cool with the invisibility stuff but not so much the murder stuff which inevitably leads to his downfall – Griffin’s, not Dr. Kemp, he’s pretty cool actually.
Surprisingly the connection between this book and the one before – There But for the Grace of God by Fred Rosen – was pretty easy to spot as both deal with the deeds and dealings of murderers. Because *spoiler alert* even though Griffin doesn’t get to actually do any murdering, he really wants to, like REALLY wants to. Plus before Griffin tried his invisibility experiment on himself, he tried it on a cat that hung around his apartment and it worked, kinda. The cat’s eyes weren’t able to turn invisible but instead of having compassion for the cat, Griffin’s just like, “Meh, good thing I don’t have cat eyes. I should be fine” and let the cat just go into the wild as if that’s a good idea. And with that disregard for animal life, and human life as well, Griffin can be safely lumped into the serial killer category just like every murderer discussed in There But for the Grace of God.
So out of a possible stack of five books, I give The Invisible Man four books. One each for inventiveness, pacing, humor (dude has these goggles made that are supposed to look like eyes but are probably in reality super terrifying/hilarious since he would never be able to blink/you know, look around) and readability. The final one I reserve because I was constantly wondering why Griffin was so angry all the time and why no one thinks to just throw a sheet over him when he’s running around invisible-like. Overall though I enjoyed this classic and plan to seek out and watch as many bad movie adaptations of the novel as I can find because I’m sure watching Griffin’s antics is just as fun on the big screen 🙂
The Books of One Stack 