The story: Told as a series events from an omnipresent narrator, we learn of the Invisible Man’s (Griffin) arrival at the quiet, provincial village of Iping. Things start to go awry as the locals become increasingly curious about this strange dude who wraps his head up in bandages and wears reflective goggles. Eventually they discover that he is invisible and faeces hits those fan blades. He tries to escape, enlisting the help of a buffoon who runs away with Griffin’s money and indecipherable notebooks (which detailed the constructs of the invisibility potion). Griffin goes nuts and decides to establish a reign of terror amongst the villagers with the assistance of fellow ex-medic, Dr Kemp. Kemp does him greasy and blows the lid on Griffin’s evil plans. I forgot to mention that Griffin could do with a few anger management sessions and when he discovers what Kemp has done, he vows to kill him. He gets very close to enacting this vengeance but the villagers gang up on him and he gets killed with a shovel (if I remember correctly). How pleasant. Just in case you were wondering, he becomes visible again once his soul flees to fire-and-brimstone-land. The story ends with the tramp leering over Griffin’s three notebooks and dreaming of how he will eventually decipher it and earn a fortune. Not a chance.
Rewa’s take on things: A thoroughly enjoyable read. Having read this and War Of The Worlds, I am tempted to seek out more of Wells’s work. Griffin was a pain in the a*se and had such a sense of entitlement that one would have thought he was Drake (he’s so hot that he can demand whatever he pleases on any day ending with a “y” ;-).
If I was invisible for a day, here’s a list of things I’d do in order of importance:
- Raid Laduree for macaroons – will need some fuel to feed the shopping frenzy I’ll inevitably embark on.
- Next stop would be Aspinal to get that orgasmic pony-skin wheelie (in black). Have to lug all my accoutrements around somehow and a girl only has two hands and two elbows!
- Then off to Hermes to get a couple more scarves and another Dogon togo leather wallet. Just because.
- MARC JACOBS!!! He would get it! To get all the other bags that I don’t already own.
- Hmm then being the generous, loving girlfriend that I am, I’d head to John Lobb to get the lover yet another pair of shoes and some crap from Albam. Actually, Albam isn’t dear enough to steal from, maybe the Mason Martin Margiela concession at Liberty then…
- Commit arson at every Jane Norman store in sight. And L’Occitane too actually…
- After all this, I’d pop over to UCL to beg my ex-professors to sort out all this invisibility mess! Haven hidden my loot of course!
So you see from my sensible list above, I thought the invisible man rather daft. I read the details of his comeuppance with a sense of Schadenfreude I must say. In my opinion, had he been less of a troll to everyone, he’d have fared better! On a more serious note, it was sad that his whilst his albinism set him apart as a pariah, he fared no better being invisible which he thought would solve his problems.
There is no doubt that Wells is a master of sorts at science fiction, I found The Invisible Man and War Of The Worlds equally thrilling. With this novella, he took the near-absurd concept of invisibility and spun the crap out of it. I say near-absurd because some x-factor contestants are so irrelevant that they made as well be invisible *insert evil grin* I kid I kid!
In a nutshell, a short but very enjoyable read with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments.
Read & Reviewed 