"Hump? What hump?"

Sorry - am being flippant as Marty Feldman answers Gene Wilder from Young Frankenstein when asked about being a hunchback - that Wilder can help him...

Lee Murphy has gone beyond what many of us have read about Ygor other than Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the old movies based on the book.

Ygor, a benevolent deformed young man, is sent by an abbot to help make a rundown castle that an important gentleman bought habitable for him, and to be of help to him when he is expected to arrive there.

Ygor is a nice soul - does remarkable things to make the castle presentable for his new 'master' - but as Frankenstein arrives with many new and most strange things, and plans to build areas where his 'New Man' will be created, we see Ygor's innocence of the world, his willingness to please, then his growth as a person.

Where Frankenstein may be brilliant, it is to Ygor he goes to help create the pieces of machinery needed for his work, so we see Ygor is also in his own way, brilliant.

The cruelty that Ygor endures hurts the reader and he tolerates this cruelty by flickers of kindness such as showing Ygor books, animals he's never seen, etc. You feel for Ygor as a man, you marvel the Ygor as an engineer of machinery, hurt for Ygor what he has to endure.
Lee Murphy has given us a bright new angle to this timeless story, and one with an ending that is most satisfying. Murphy's writing flows and unfolds at an amazing pace.

Excellent read.

ellen george

Ygor by Lee Murphy, ISBN 0-9667704-0-4, Defining Moments Publishers, review by ellen george