Patchwork Girl [CD-ROM]

Shelley Jackson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1995

CD for Macintosh and Windows. The acclaimed hypertext re-working of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, now in its 6th printing!

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A cult hit." -- Village Voice

"Clear, bold stories that the reader follows avidly." -- The Independent (London)

"Perhaps the true paradigmatic work of the era." -- Robert Coover

About the Author

Shelley Jackson holds an AB in art from Stanford and an MFA in creative writing from Brown University. Her short fiction has appeared in Fence, Conjunctions, Crowd, Grand Street and Kenyon Review. Her first book, The Melancholy of Anatomy, was published to widespread acclaim by Anchor in April 2002. Jackson also illustrates children's books, including two of her own, The Old Woman and the Wave and the forthcoming The Alchemist's Dog. Jackson was selected by the Village Voice as one of the year's "Writers on the Verge."

Patchwork Girl is taught in college classrooms around the world.

Product Details

• CD-ROM: 300 pages
• Publisher: Eastgate Systems Inc; Cdr edition (January 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884511236
• ISBN-13: 978-1884511233
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #334,969 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!, March 1, 2004

By 

Paul B. "Critic" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patchwork Girl (CD-ROM)

Patchwork Girl is great hypertext and a great novel. It picks up the monstrous body/monstrous text idea from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and really explores monstrosity in all its various forms. Certainly one way that Patchwork Girl is monstrous has to do with technology (big surprise there)--it takes hours just to figure out how to read the novel. But that's deliberate--unlike a novel, Patchwork Girl isn't designed to be comfortable but to shock. It's not violent or pornographic, though, and it's intensely beautiful and subtly comic throughout. It's not at all readable in the normal sense--you just wander through it at your own pace, never knowing how much of it you've read, always getting more out of it. And the writing is beautiful--you might expect the gimmicky technology to take precedence, but it never does. And the bathroom scene--just keep meandering until you et to the bathroom scene, and you'll see why I'm so enthusiastic.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great read, January 20, 2003

By 

depthfunction "depthfunction" (St. Louis, Missouri USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Patchwork Girl (CD-ROM)

Michael Joyce and his "Afternoon" may get all the recognition for his work in hypertext literature, but there are many other important writers out there working in this new medium. One of them is Shelley Jackson, and her take on the Frankenstein myth is outstanding. For my money, Jackson has Joyce's novel beat in every way. Jackson does require that you have read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, first, however, but beyond that, Jackson's book is very engaging and easy to follow. If you want to find out what this "hypertext literature" is all about, this is as good a place as any to start.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hyperfiction Novel, September 28, 2008

By 

Mrs. Sharon Gardner (England) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Patchwork Girl (CD-ROM)

I used this hyperfiction for an essay to compare hyperfiction with printed fiction. I was suprised to find out how creative and enjoyable the story of the Patchwork is, despite my reservations about hyperfiction.

I could not run this CD-ROM on my Vista windows package and had to run on an older version of Windows so ensure you are able to run this CD-ROM before purchasing.