Man Made Boy combines genres, characters, and mythical legends in an explosion of ideas – and manages to make it work.
Boy is the son of the Monster and the Bride, both creations of the infamous Dr. Frankenstein. But while Boy’s aptitude for science and computers makes him the laughing stock of the community of monsters in which he and his family live, it might just be his way out.
Leaving behind his family, his job, and the love of his life, Boy ventures out into New York City to try his hand at life as a human. After all, it can’t be worse than the life of derision he currently leads, with a father who can’t feel emotions and a mother who can’t show them.
But TV shows and the internet are no preparation for real life, and these might be problems that Boy cannot solve with binary code. Man Made Boy takes the tired tropes of a hero’s journey, a coming-of-age romance and the modernisation of mythical creatures, and updates them in spectacular fashion.
Review: ‘Man Made Boy’
It is a brave choice to centre a book around a character that is literally built from the body parts of dead humans. Boy is funny, highly intelligent, and insightful (although as with all teenagers, more often about other people than about himself). Still, this is not the conventional hero, and his hero’s journey is all the more satisfying because of it.
The strength of Man Made Boy primarily lies in author Jon Svokron’s crafting of characters. Every character is flawed, but all are offered the chance of redemption. Perhaps this overly optimistic outlook is the only real flaw to Man Made Boy, but it is so well written that we can’t begrudge an author who would like to give everyone the chance at a happy ending.
which means that no one is.”
There is a playfulness to Svokron’s world building that makes it okay for all of these mythical creatures to exist together. He manages to take Jekyll and Hyde, Medusa, dragons, invisible men, werewolves, and many more, and somehow make their coexistence seem logical.
The line between magic, science and technology is constantly blurred; this is matched by the combination of the fantasy, science-fiction, cyberpunk, romance and coming-of-age genres. Sure, you have to suspend disbelief – but if you are reading a book about the son of Frankenstein’s monster, you probably knew that already.
In creating a world filled with “monsters,” Skovron reminds us that our own individuality does not diminish our worth, but enhances it. In less expert hands, such a message could seem preachy. From Svokron, it is simply refreshing. Everyone in Man Made Boy is a monster, which means that no one is. Man Made Boy takes a universal story and makes it unique, an aspect we tend to ignore unless it is not present.
Just as Boy was built from various old parts, so too has Skovron thrown together tired tropes, characters and genres, and made them his own. The difference between Made Made Boy and other authors who have tried the same thing? Here, it works.
Man Made Boy by Jon Skovron is available now through Viking Penguin and Allen & Unwin.