Young-adult Frankenstein

By Mark Medley
Reprinted from The National Post
photo credit: Tim Fraser

The National Post's Mark Medley spoke to bestselling author Kenneth Oppel about his latest young-adult epic.

Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, her first and bestknown novel, when she was only 21 - an age when most people are still in university. Impressed? Well, Kenneth Oppel was still in high school when he published Colin's Fantastic Video Adventure, a novel he'd begun at the age of 14.

Now, 25 years after the start of his writing career, Oppel has mined Shelley's masterpiece for his latest book, This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, one of the most talked-about young-adult novels of the fall.

"I think any time you use a classic as a springboard, you might be asking for a bit of trouble," says Oppel, sitting on a patio near his Toronto home earlier this week. "You're begging for a comparison. And it would be pretty tough to come out on the winning end."

Oppel was rereading Frankenstein a few years ago when he was struck by descriptions of the scientist's childhood. "No human being could have passed a happier childhood than myself," Frankenstein says in an early chapter, before chronicling carefree days spent seeking the elixir of life, searching for the philosopher's stone and raising demons.

"What kind of happy kid spends his time trying to raise the dead and commune with devils?" Oppel asks. "But, as a writer, I looked at that stuff and I thought, 'Hmm. It's pretty interesting kernels for stories.' "

Although he jotted down some ideas, Oppel was hesitant to write an origin story. The market was already flooded with prequels - Young Sherlock Holmes, Young James Bond - and Oppel didn't want to be seen as jumping on a bandwagon, however lucrative it might be. Eventually, after finally deciding to explore Frankenstein's childhood in a novel, Oppel typed up a couple of pages and sent them to his agent, who "flipped" for the idea. He then wrote two sample scenes, which his agent sent to publishers around the world. "There was a bidding war for the book based on the idea," Oppel says.

In This Dark Endeavour, a 16-year-old Victor Frankenstein, with the aid of his pseudo-sister Elizabeth and friend Henry Clerval, set out to find the Elixir of Life, which Victor hopes will save his twin brother, Konrad, who has been afflicted with a strange malady. Oppel describes it as an alternative history of the Frankenstein family.

"I'm just trying to capture the flavour of the book," he says. "It's not supposed to be a total simulation of what Mary Shelley might have written had she gone back further in the chronology of the story."

Those familiar with Shelley's life or her 1818 novel will spot elements Oppel has borrowed for his own work, but readers needn't be familiar with Shelley's book to enjoy Oppel's offering, though he hopes young readers will seek out the original afterwards.

"What's exceptional is the story and the subject matter," he says of the original. "It's mythological. It's a cautionary tale about science and religion and early technologies - our relationship to the things we create on the planet and the other creatures on the planet. So it's a very moral and ethical book. I think that's one of the reasons I like it - it's got everything: it's a page-turner, it's a great story, it's got a monster for God's sake! It's sci-fi! It's horror! It's everything! But as a writer, it's all material. I look at it as, what a great story. I'd like to dig around in that and see where I can go with it."

Oppel, who says he's drawn to "heroes with huge cracks in their character," sees some similarities between his own work and the scientist with the Lazarus complex.

"We're grave robbers," he says of writers. "We dig stuff up. We chop it up. We sew it back together. We do our best. Sometimes it's ugly. Sometimes the suturing isn't good. Actually, when I think about it, it's a pretty excellent metaphor for the creative process. Because there is theft - subconsciously if not consciously. My imagination is informed and made up with all my favourite books, everything I saw, every comic I read, every movie, every video game I played, every theme park ride I was on. Every experience that I had is somewhere in there. And you pilfer, and you poach, and you try to recreate these amazing moments you had as a kid - these perfect, amazing, moments - and create this world."

The 44-year-old Oppel has been creating worlds since 1985, when his first novel was published. Since then, he's written more than 20 books for children, young adults and adults, including 1997's Silverwing, which has sold almost a million copies around the world, and 2004's Airborn, which won the Governor General's Award for Children's Literature.

This Dark Endeavour may prove to be his most popular book yet. It has already been sold to 13 territories around the world, and optioned for film by Summit Entertainment, the powerhouse behind the Twilight franchise. Matt Reeves (Cloverfield) has been tapped to direct. Although Oppel is realistic about the movie's chances of being made - he says seven Frankenstein features are currently in development - This Dark Endeavour has one thing going for it: "Mine ... is the only one with hot teens."

Whatever happens with the movie, Oppel is not leaving Shelley's world behind just yet - a sequel called Such Wicked Intent will be released next year.

Midway through our interview, I ask Oppel if he'd mind it if another writer used his work for their own fiction.

"After I'm dead, I don't imagine I'll have any say in it anyway," he says with a laugh. "It's an interesting question. Sure, if they did a good job, all power to them. Go for it. I don't mind that, it's really quite flattering. Too bad I wouldn't be around to get some of the residuals."

mmedley@nationalpost.com

Toronto Star covers DARK ENDEAVOUR

The darker side of sweet sixteen

September 16, 2011
By Sarah Millar Toronto Star

This isn't the first time a book of Kenneth Oppel's has been optioned for a movie.

It's happened to many of his books before, including the Airborn trilogy, which was optioned by Universal Pictures and Stephen Somers, the man behind The Mummy movies.

"That never got made," the Toronto-based author said pointedly over the phone.

Now it's the author's latest young adult book, This Dark Endeavour: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein, which has been optioned for a film. This time by Summit Entertainment and Karen Rosenfelt: The people who took the Twilight trilogy to the big screen.

So far the film has a director: Matt Reeves, who directed the film Cloverfield (which is one of Oppel calls: "Godzilla done right."), and a screenwriter.

But just because the book has been optioned, has a producer, a director and a screenwriter doesn't mean it's going to get made. Especially in Hollywood. This is something Oppel knows well. Because of this, he's trying to remain realistic, but hopeful about the book coming to a big screen near you.

This Dark Endeavour, which was released last month, tells the story of Victor Frankenstein at the age of 16. It riffs off Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, a book that Oppel has always loved.

After re-reading the classic novel years ago, he began to wonder about Frankenstein's youth. He was intrigued by how Frankenstein described his youth ("No youth could have passed more happier than mine").

"It made me laugh because I thought it was a rather disingenous statement to say that when you're doing things totally unlike what you imagine a happy, carefree youth would do," Oppel said.

He also wondered what could happen to someone in their youth that would turn them into a man who goes around digging up graves and chopping up body parts and sewing them back together.

As a starting point, he decided to tell the story of Frankenstein's hunt for the Elixir of life — something Shelley mentioned in her novel. In This Dark Endeavour, young Victor feels compelled to find the Elixir when his beloved twin brother gets ill and may die. Fearing that conventional medicine cannot save him, Victor turns to black magic.

Oppel admitted that there were challenges in taking a character so well-known and making it his own.

"I was apprehensive, certainly in so much as you feel nervous taking on a literary classic and borrowing from it and reimagining it," he explained.

"So you feel you have to be respectful and try to keep the spirit of the original. And I tried to do that with the language, without alienating my readers. I'd like to think the novel has the same tone, it's the same sort of gothic, operatic, overwrought tone as the original."

Oppel learned that the book had been optioned in January of this year, after he had finished writing it. But, he said, the thought of the book being made into a movie did not influence the writing process.

"Realistically, the chance of any book becoming a film is slim. Even though now more than ever before more young adult books are being turned into movies because it's a very hot market, (doesn't guarantee a film will come)," he said.

Instead, Oppel's looking forward to his next book, a follow up to This Dark Endeavour, called Such Wicked Intent which picks up right where This Dark Endeavour leaves off and will be released in about a year. Oppel is not sure if the series of young Victor Frankenstein will stretch beyond the two books, but said he loves to write characters like Victor Frankenstein.

"It's so much more interesting to take a character that really exhibits every element of human nature than just focus on someone that's calm and heroic and does the right thing 95 per cent of the time. . . in the new book he descends to new levels of obsessiveness, and that to me is the fun part.

"I mean he's Victor Frankenstein, he's not Charlie Brown."

Oppel's DARK ENDEAVOR film moves ahead

Matt Reeves And Jacob Estes Take On Summit's Frankenstein Film


By MIKE FLEMING
Tuesday May 24, 2011 @ 4:43pm EDT
reprinted fromHollywood Deadline

Let Me In director Matt Reeves has been signed to direct This Dark Endeavor, with Mean Creek writer/helmer Jacob Aaron Estes writing the script for Summit Entertainment. Deadline told you yesterday about a batch of films based on the Mary Shelley Frankenstein novel. Summit just took a step forward in this contest. The film is based on the Kenneth Oppel novel This Dark Endeavor: The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein. It will be published this summer by Simon & Schuster, the first of a series.

In the Oppel novel, Frankenstein's twin Konrad is gravely ill. His brother seeks out a mysterious old alchemist to help him produce the Elixir of Life, a serum that will bestow the gift of perpetual health. You can't order this drink at a pub, and Frankenstein sets out on a dangerous adventure to find the elusive contents. He's accompanied by his best friend Elizabeth, who is sweet on Konrad. Things get complicated among the three of them.

Reeves, who also directed Cloverfield, adds This Dark Endeavor to two other projects he's working on. He signed recently to direct the Justin Cronin vampire novel The Passage for Fox 2000, and he's got a deal at Universal to write and direct a film based on the Ray Nelson short story 8 O'Clock in the Morning, about a man who awakens with the realization that aliens are all over the place and control society. Estes just completed The Details, the Tobey Maguire/Elizabeth Banks-starrer that sold to The Weinstein Company in a big deal at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Both are repped by CAA.