Fabulous Monsters by Alberto Manguel (Yale University Press, £14.99)

Now in his 70s, Alberto Manguel is an Argentinian translator, essayist, novelist and critic, as well as being Director of the National Library of Argentina. Born in Israel (he was the son of the Argentinian ambassador), he grew up in Buenos Aires. 

Like Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco, Manguel is one of those extraordinary people who live and breathe books. He has written five novels and edited more than 20 anthologies. Fabulous Monsters is his 47th book, the 20th non-fiction offering. 

He writes quirky books with great titles such as How Pinocchio Learned to Read, A History of Reading and The Library at Night. And he has a terrific turn of phrase: “We never step twice into the same book”; “Dr. Frankenstein’s wish is to create life without the participation of a woman”; “The only truly alien space is that of the body we inhabit. Everything else is open for exploration.” 

Fabulous Monsters presents a selection from the great literary characters — from Alice, Job and Faust to Sinbad and Robinson Crusoe.

The range sums up Manguel. He is astonishingly erudite. Calling him well-read is like saying that Ahab had a thing about whales. The book is made up of 37 short essays on characters whom, “we love best [who] follow us throughout our years.” 

Why do they? What is it about the great literary characters that makes them endure over the centuries? 
It is obviously not that they are the all basically same. For what do Red Riding Hood and Quasimodo have in common? 

Manguel neither answers nor even asks the question, but provides a wealth of insights. Madame Bovary begins and ends not with the heroine but with her dull and dutiful husband. Little Red Riding Hood is good and obedient but she’s also disobedient, a victim but also “mistress of her own fate”. Dracula is fascinated with blood, but also with necks. Alice in Wonderland is about nonsense but it is also about making sense of nonsense. Who is Hamlet’s mother? Why don’t we know anything about her? 

Manguel loves lists. If you want to know how many great literary characters have cross-dressed, who are the great supermen in literature or how many great literary mothers hated their children, this is the book for you. It is a pleasure to read, a work of literary criticism that is full of sailors, little girls, monsters and vampires.

David Herman is a senior JC reviewer