Even if we are living our lives through books, trying to find meaning in the way our personal stories develop, we are never living only one story at a time: we have a main plot, yes, but it is littered with subplots and asides, grocery lists and electric bills and…

The creature described here far better conveys the notion of disparate human parts sewn together into a living ragdoll, creating a more nightmarish apparition than the budget-limited design of Universal. Yet it is the latter that has persisted through so many incarnations. The question of why this should be is not something I intend to consider in a review of the book (although I might archly suggest that…