Author: H.G. Wells
This is the third H.G. Wells book I’ve read in the last year or so. He doesn’t ever really let me down.
The Invisible Man is about, well, an invisible man. The story starts out narrating the experience of some locals who have run ins with a mysterious man who wears big bunches of clothes and bandages around his face, a hat tipped down, sunglasses, and everything possible to cover his entire body. Slowly people start to learn something is off about him, until in a fit of rage, he starts to reveal himself as invisible, and starts terrorizing some of the people before escaping out of town.
As he escapes from town, he attempts to convince a stranger he meets to be his accomplice. He puts him in charge of his diaries (which he can’t carry since they would appear to be floating). But the man is very paranoid and ends up trying to escape from the invisible man. To summarize briefly, the man ends up hiding away the diaries of the invisible man, which the invisible man is desperately trying to get his hands on.
We then shift to the perspective of the invisible man as he tells an acquaintance he went to university with how he managed to make himself invisible, the struggles he has faced so far (including his recent trip to the town I described and his run in with the stranger), and his grand plans for what he wants to accomplish. The invisible man tries to convince his acquaintance to be his partner because as it turns out, there are some downsides to being invisible all the time.
For example, since he has to be naked all the time, he gets really cold at night. He can’t eat in public because they’d see the food and even when he chews and swallows it, people would see the vague outline as it digests. He can’t steal very effectively because even though he is invisible, the objects appear to float. An accomplice would fix much of these difficulties.
However we learn that the invisible man isn’t particularly stable, and his plans include a reign of terror where he will declare himself the ruler of a city. Obviously the invisible mans friend is not happy with this, and attempts to call the police and capture the invisible man.
There are several scenes of fighting with the invisible man, and he is understandably hard to get a hold of. He can land blows that you don’t see coming, and tackle you without warning. Eventually in a climactic scene at the end where the invisible man is trying to escape a mob of people, several cops, and his ex-friend, he is killed in the commotion as people desperately tried to stop the anarchy he was causing.
The epilogue of the book ends with the stranger the invisible man gave his diaries to, named Mr. Marvel. The scene shows Marvel pouring over the diaries of the invisible man, and it is strongly implied he is trying to figure out how to become invisible himself, though we are left guessing.
Throughout the book, the invisible man made mention of all the great opportunities he thought there would be with being invisible, and that he didn’t see any downsides. Of course, once he turned invisible, he realized a lot of those downsides. The ending is interesting because it points to a similar cycle possibly happening with Marvel, who is enticed by the wonder of becoming invisible, and is not thinking about the downsides, even though he would have experienced some of them, having known the invisible man personally.