Book Review: Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft

Herbert West: Reanimator by H. P. Lovecraft

Herbert West starts out his career as a medical student at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts. He has very unusual ambitions. He wants to develop a serum that will bring the recently deceased back to life. He quickly realizes the formula needs to be altered for different species. His desire to shift from animal to human experimentation is forbidden by the school, so West goes underground (sometimes literally) to continue his experimentation. He's aided by the narrator, who drops lots of hints about West's ultimate fate as he goes from an idealistic follower to a horrified assistant.

The story was written over several months as a parody of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. West is a full-on anti-hero, constantly pushing past moral limits and making horrific, zombie-like beings that he can't contain or control. He's a devote materialist, assuming that the biological processes of dead flesh can be reactivated by chemical means. West and the narrator realize that the human brain deteriorates very quickly, so they need very fresh bodies. The morbid pursuit gets worse and worse--West even signs up for World War I just so he'd have access to fresh corpses or body parts (because he started working on reviving individual body parts as well). If that wasn't bad enough, West is very racist dealing with Blacks and Italians. The narrative is a little choppy. Each story has a little recap of what came before, which was okay for monthly publication but is awkward when they are all put together. The stories jump from the university to their first medical practice in a nearby town to the world war to Boston.  The overall story is interesting but could use some streamlining. 

Mildly recommended.

The story was made into a series of movies in the 1980s beginning with H. P. Lovecraft's Re-animator.