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| Book Cover via Amazon.com |
Opinion
“Mrs. Y, you keep covering books you loved when you were a kid. Is this one of them?” You might be asking yourself that considering everything I have covered as of late. Well, I’m happy to inform you all this was the first time I ever read “The Invisible Man” so I am going into this with my eyes wide open and unaware. All I ever knew of “The Invisible Man” was his brief role in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” which was a movie that had much potential, but unfortunately flopped. I also am aware of another film with Kevin Bacon in it, but I honestly don’t remember if I watched it or not.
So for those of you like me wondering if this matches any movies, to my knowledge, the answer is a resounding no. I picked this up on Kindle Unlimited, and I was happy to see it was rather short. "The Invisible Man" is under 200 pages which is good for me, and I was looking for another short story or novella to enjoy. Though this isn’t precisely a novella, it is almost the same length, and I found the amount of story that was there quite nice.
For my first impressions of this novel, I was intrigued. In the first few chapters, there is a slow build-up of what is going on, and the title somewhat clued me in, but I didn’t know what to expect. When the action picked up, it got a lot better, and I found myself glued to this book.
Critiques time and my first critique fall under the “Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation” part of my scoring. This novel has no such idea of what it is to use space between paragraphs. I know, I talk about this nitpick often, but I read so very much. I wish more novels added space between paragraphs, even if it is a shorter story than most.
My second critique has to do with the use of the em dash. There is a lot of em dash love in this book, but I’m not sure that all that loving was right. Em dashes are not commas, and they are not replacements for semi-colons. I even went to the Grammarly blog to figure out the proper context, and I am convinced it was overused here. I found it used frequently enough to note, and while I realize em dashes are designed to be versatile in grammatical situations, they are not the end all and be all of the punctuation disasters. I’m not even sure the em dash rules were a thing when this book was written, but I am noting it to note it.
Let’s go into some of the things I love about “The Invisible Man” and the first and foremost thing; it’s such a fun idea. Imagine being the genius that figures out how to retract light? I honestly don’t think anyone’s figured out how to do this biologically yet, and if they did, how would we know?
Another thing I enjoyed about “The Invisible Man” is interesting character development and progress. The main character is his undoing. I appreciate that concept. I like that the story is told about a man who is facing himself and the fear of what that does to him. I also love that what ultimately causes his downfall is his actions, and he has only himself to blame. This is a delicious treat; it’s a story about not how someone is facing others as much as he’s facing himself.
I honestly believe this story should be part of normal reading to children, because, not only is it a fantastic tale but it also is a cautionary one. You cannot run from yourself. You can blame yourself when you cause your problems as well. Now, that does sometimes drag others along, but really if it’s your fault, you can only fix it. “The Invisible Man” has a great deal to say about bullying and how that isn’t ever going to work out for either the bully and the one being bullied. It also goes into telling someone too much information and what that can do to harm you. I feel in this world of identity theft, this part of the story is an excellent aspect to caution.
Overall, this was a great book. I honestly loved it, I liked the short story aspect to it, I liked the concept and the adventure, and I enjoyed the book. I think it’s perfect for anyone from about 11 years old on up. There are some concepts I think are a bit too grown up for my kids, but mostly, I think that if they got a bit older, they could handle it.
Score
With all of that in mind and the math from the scoring, I’m giving “The Invisible Man” a resounding 89/100 which is a 4-Star Review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you have never read it, pick this up! You may have an exciting afternoon to be thankful for because of it.
