There is a moment for me, when reading a piece of writing, when art breaches the boundary between self-expression and embodiment. Many works eventually approach this threshold. But while reading Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, there is no such boundary—no singular moment when the work transforms from fiction into something more intimate. There is no moment of genuine embodiment because the entire novel reads like a poem of mourning, a eulogy, a confes

Last night I dreamt of a nameless woman— A lovely, unusual name formed on her lips but dissolved before it reached me. I woke with the feeling that I had almost known her—yet she remained a stranger. It was no coincidence, I think, that I had been rereading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier when my dreams became haunted—fully submerged in its gothic atmosphere and quiet mystery. I have spent my evenings marvelling at du Maurier’s ability to carry me through time and space so seam