The Walking Dead #4: The Heart's Desire by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Read: 23 February, 2012

The story picks up at the cliff hanger from Safety Behind Bars, and continues to cover the survivors' stay in the prison. Zombies make very few appearances in this volume and are, for the most part, just background scenery to the real story taking place among the living.

Unfortunately, the greater focus on interpersonal relationships brings to the forefront Kirkman's weakness in writing dialogue. Overall, I've found the writing in this series to be rather bland and, at times, suffering from the kind of awkwardness that an editor might easily have fixed. From a character standpoint, we meet Michonne who seems like she has the potential to be an interesting character, but she behaves erratically- alternating between character and caricature at the flip of a switch. She clearly has a history that I hope will be exposed in future volumes, but I found in frustrating that the survivors took very little interest in who she was, how she had survived for so long, or how she came to have two zombies following her around on a leash who "stopped trying to attack [her] a long time ago." Seems like the kind of thing the survivors ought to want to know more about...

Closing the issue, we have a rather lengthy speech from Rick Grimes about survival in a zombie apocalypse that was, frankly, cringer-worthy. While it had all the markers of "the badass teaches everyone a little something about their darker natures" speeches that we get in the movies, it suffered from all the failings of these sorts of monologues - superficiality, a lack of logical consistency, and an awkwardness that turns the characters into mouthpieces for authors who want to sound cool.

This was by far the most difficult volume of the series to write so far because it had so little action to carry it through and, unfortunately, I didn't feel that Kirkman is capable of handling the interpersonal complexities that were needed. That being said, he and Adlard's artwork did convey some sense of psychological breakdown - that the immediacy of survival had been keeping everyone's heads together, but that sustained (relative) safety is highlighting the cracks.

I don't want to give the wrong impression. I may not be impressed with The Walking Dead, but it's still an interesting series and I'll be reading volume 5. It's pulp, but it's a very quick read and the illustrations make for a different experience than I'm used to.

The Walking Dead #3: Safety Behind Bars by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Read: 17 February, 2012

We love zombie stories  because it feeds into our destructive impulses. The zombies destroy the daily stresses and struggles of our modern life. No more bills to pay, no more 9-to-5, no more damn kids on mah damn lawn... And then there's the possibility of building anew from the ashes of society, a clean slate on which the survivors may impose their will in a way that many of us feel too helpless to do in our real lives.

We had a few false starts in this direction in Miles Behind Us (such as the discovery of the Wiltshire Estates), but the immediacy of survival kept the characters' attention. But in Safety Behind Bars, the survivors find a respite in a prison. Zombies are no longer a threat, there's no lack of food, and there's even working showers. This is where the lesson comes in.

Zombie stories generally teach the same lesson. They wipe away the society that gives us so much stress and ennui, and they give us the opportunity to rebuild, to make it different, to make it good. But we're doomed, says the zombie story. Given every chance to make a society, we will still be our petty selves, we will still play power games, we will still destroy ourselves. We are flawed, so flawed that the dreary world of rules we live in now is preferable to the freedom zombies give us. The zombie is never the monster in the zombie story - people are.

Kirkman didn't do a terrible job at exploring this theme, but it's just been done so many times that it was somewhat tiresome to read through. From the opening of the volume, I knew that the survivors had reached a safe haven, and I knew that would mean trotting out the tired old "we're our own worst enemy" trope. Unfortunately, he did not disappoint.

That's been my impression of the series so far, really. The dialogue is so-so, and the plot is basically just running through the standard zombie story plots. It's enjoyable insomuch as I enjoy zombie stories, but it's nothing special. Even as far as zombie stories go, the fast pace of the comics means that I don't feel like I'm getting to know the characters, or to care about them. I'm hoping that it will get better as the series trods on, but so far I'm not impressed.

The Walking Dead #2: Miles Behind Us by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard

Read: 14 February, 2012

In Miles Behind Us, we follow Rick and the other survivors as they hunt for food and meet some other people. There's the standard story of the survivors who keep the zombies captive rather than kill them (which has never, in the history of zombie stories, ended well), and a few other adventures.

This volume has a different artist from the first, although it's not necessarily obvious to someone like me who isn't really familiar enough with the graphic novel medium to know what to look for. I did start to notice a difference in feel about halfway through, though. I commented in my review of Days Gone Bye on the way that the use of detail helped to highlight elements of the story. That's still the case in Miles Behind Us, but the details are used to express emotions rather than to create the ambience of fear. In particular, the new artists use shadows very deftly to convey brooding, sadness, anger, menace, etc.

The plot is interesting, but I feel like the dialogue itself could have used more polishing. There were a few instances of fairly awkward phrasing that a good editor could have fixed. And as I complained in my review of Days Gone Bye, the fast pace makes it difficult for me to feel for the characters. The artwork helps somewhat, but I still feel like the story is kept at a very superficial level.

I found the use of bold in the dialogue to be fairly distracting. Maybe this is just a graphic novel convention that I'm unaccustomed to, but it made it difficult to read because I was putting emphasis on the bold words, even though this disrupted the natural cadence of what was being said. I was unable to find any pattern or sense to the selection of bolded words. If anyone here is more familiar with the conventions of this genre, I'd appreciate an explanation!

Overall, I enjoyed the book. I enjoy the zombie/apocalyptic setting, and the graphic format makes this series a very quick read. so far, it's nothing special, but it's certainly good enough.

The Walking Dead #1: Days Gone Bye by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore

Read: 1 February, 2012

I'm enjoying AMC's The Walking Dead TV show, so I thought I'd give the graphic novel a try. The beginning of Days Gone Bye is very similar to the beginning, although differences do start to creep in.

The artwork is gorgeous. Tony Moore's work is at once realistic and expressive. The zombies are rendered in far more detail than the living, making their grotesqueness stand out from the page. Injuries, rot, flies burrowing under skin, all is meticulously drawn for maximum effect. Walking Dead isn't a "jump out and get you" horror, but the artwork adds a creepiness to the zombies that drew me in to the story and to the fear felt by the main characters.

I was a little disappointed by the lack of depth. The TV series gives far more time to each episode and allows for more character exposition, while the graphic novel seems to glide through at a much faster pace. As a result, I'm not feeling like I know the characters the way I did while watching the show.

It's a good series and I'll definitely be reading more.

Gothic Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell

Read: 26 February, 2010

I've always loved horror stories, and I fell in love with Elizabeth Gaskell in University. So when I saw that Penguin had a collection of Gaskell's Gothic short stories, I knew I had to buy it immediately.

And it did not disappoint!

Gothic Tales is a collection of stories ranging from "wonder stories" to horror. While not of the same calibre as her novels, these are none-the-less the products of a master storyteller.

I'd say that this collection is definitely a 'must have' for fans of Gaskell, Victorian literature, or the Gothic genre.

I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Read: 12 August, 2011

Robert Neville is alone, completely alone in a world overrun by vampires.He is alive, but he can't figure out why he bothers.

I enjoyed the recent movie with Will Smith - mostly because I read into it far more than any of its creators intended. When I talk about the movie with others, it's like we saw entirely different movies. Mine was a subtle commentary on racism, or perhaps our relationship with the mentally ill. My movie featured a brilliantly executed unreliable narrator and one of the best ironic endings I've ever seen. What other people saw was yet another mindless monster flick.

I Am Legend the novel is everything I saw into the movie, only better.

Neville is a fantastic character. He's going nuts, making stupid mistakes, and drinking himself silly. But it's never frustrating, and I never felt that I just wanted him to shut up and get on with things. That's because Matheson has perfect timing, he never allows Neville to wallow for too long.

The sense of isolation and loneliness is palpable. As I was reading, I could really feel Neville's despair. This makes the story creepy and even terrifying without ever resorting to monster-in-the-closet gimmicks. Quite the opposite - the vampires' inability to wake during the day give Neville the advantage. He can scavenge safely during the day and then simply wait out the night in his house-come-fortress. The vampires are never the source of terror, the loneliness is.

This was one of the best, most perfectly executed books that I've read in a very long time. I highly recommend it for any fans of science fiction, distopian fantasy, post-apocalyptic fiction, and horror fiction.

NOTE: The copy I was reading was a first printing and had a truly creepy portrait of a young Matheson emerging from the shadows on the back. Yikes!

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Read: 7 February, 2010

I took a course during my university career on Science Fiction and Fantasy, taught by a heavily accented Ukrainian woman with very little qualification in the subject other than personal interest. The class structure was very informal. We had a reading list, but the syllabus included notes for each book where watching the movie would be a suitable alternative. Dracula was one such book, although the syllabus stipulated that only one version would be acceptable.

This was the same year that I was taking Victorian Literature and Colonial Literature, both courses assigning full length novels on a bi-weekly basis. I read so much that I got eye-fatigue and had to wear glasses for the rest of the year. I read so much that one of the professors (the Victorian Lit one) apologized to my mother at graduation. If I could lessen me reading load by one book, all the better.

I'm glad that I took advantage of the movie option because  I was so harried by schoolwork at the time that I was reading far too superficially - skimming to intake just enough for the tests but not enough for enjoyment. So I was able to approach the book a few years later with a clean impression and all the time chance and nature give us.

I didn't realize from the movie or pop culture that the book is written entirely in letter, news articles, and diary entries. In the story, this style is explained when one of the main characters collects all the story's fragments from the other characters and compiles them chronologically (so that they can examine and compare what they know so far about the story's baddy). It's done wonderfully, adding a sense of realism to the story.

The epistolary style is rarely done well. With the more usual narrative style, characterization is easier to fudge. But when characters are given their own voices, it suddenly becomes much more obvious if the author fails to give them unique personalities - or, just as bad, tries to differentiate them with the use of cheap gimmicks. But Bram Stoker pulls it off perfectly, making Dracula the single best example of the multiple narrator style that I've ever seen.

I really can't emphasize how much I enjoyed this book. It's brilliantly written, the plot is interesting, the characters have depth, the suspense is maintained, and there's an actual ending (something of a rarity among those easily-distracted Victorians). Other than a few points of plot, it's really nothing like any of the pop culture we're all familiar with.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris

Read: 20 December, 2009

Will Graham is tracking down the Red Dragon killer, but he needs a little help to get into the mind of the beast. It is Hannibal Lecter, a serial killer, who provides Graham with the dues he needs to solve the case. But Lecter has his own motivations, and Graham must outwit him if he's ever to catch the Red Dragon.

This was an interesting story with some pretty good suspense. However, after having seen the movie, I found the character of Hannibal Lecter to be somewhat lacking. Anthony Hopkins was able to give Lecter an almost god-like presence, and to appear simultaneously enticing and frightening. His dialogue, his expression, everything about movie-Lecter made him the perfect monster. By comparison, book-Lecter seemed only half-developed. It was really quite disappointing, especially since the book format offers so much more opportunity for character development.

But the book was quite good, and it's certainly an easy read. Certainly, a great choice for beach reading now that the summer is here.

Don't Look Now and Other Stories by Daphne du Maurier

Read: 17 November, 2009

The thing that struck me the most about this collection of stories is that it could have been classed as travel narratives just as easily as horror. I found it so interesting to read about exotic locations while at the same time getting a wonderfully-crafted suspense story!

Don't Look Now

I wanted to read this story after seeing the excellent movie with Donald Sutherland, and it certainly didn't disappoint! The pacing is delightfully slow with great suspense-building, and the story has one of the most fabulous final lines I've ever read.

Not After Midnight

A schoolmaster holidays in Crete, hoping to work on his painting. But while there, he notices strange things starting to happen... An interesting story about madness and paranoia as the schoolmaster becomes obsessed with fellow vacationers.

A Border-Line Case

Shelagh's father dies, his final words some kind of plea, or perhaps an accusation. Confused and racked by guilt, she decides to find Nick, the estranged best man at her parents' wedding, to learn more about her father's past. This story was excellent, a crazy psychological "mindfuck" with a great twist ending.

The Way of the Cross

A group of pilgrims visiting Jerusalem meet with disaster. This is possibly the most character-focused story in the collection, but also the least interesting.

The Breakthrough

This is a story of science gone awry. The main character gets a new job with a team of scientists trying to find a new energy source. He quickly realizes that something far more sinister is going on. An interesting story with some really great lines, though not the best treatment of scientific ethics.

Spirit by J.P. Hightman

Read: 15 January, 2010

Tess and Tobias Goodraven haven't been normal since being orphaned in a fire as children. Since then, they have sought to contact the 'Other Side.' When they heard that a notoriously haunted ghost town close to Salem was being re-opened to the public for a winter festival, they couldn't resist exploring the power of the three witches who never truly died. But what they find is far more dangerous than any hauntings they've encountered before.

The dust jacket of my edition says that Hightman is a screenwriter - and it shows. The novel is completely visual, as though no other sense mattered. There is little consideration for style and the timing of scares, which would work just fine in Hollywood but falls flat in print. Characters are one-dimensional. What little personality exists is told to the reader - their actions and speech rarely matching the image the narrator tries to impose. In the end, the twist was utterly predictable, made all the worse for Hightman's lack of trust in his readers as he repeats it, over and over again, in every conceivable way lest we should fail to catch his cleverness.

To say one positive thing about Spirit, the mechanics of the writing are all correct - making the book bearable if not enjoyable.

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Read: 3 December, 2008

I was recommended this book by a German foreign-exchange student during my fourth year at University. We were taking a class together on First Nations Literature and I mentioned to her that I wanted to read more continental European books but that I had a hard time finding out which ones would be good. She suggested this one.

I must admit that my immediate curiosity led me to watch the movie before I had the chance to buy the book. The movie was amazing and confirmed the recommendation. In comparison with the book, the movie stands alone. That being said, it isn't as good as the book overall. There was only one part where I felt that it surpassed the book - the scene where Grenouille murders the first girl. In the book version, he just kills her, smells her, and leaves. There's no emotional whatsoever. In the movie version, on the other hand, he kills her, smells her, and then freaks out when her scent starts to dissipate. I found that to be a more likely reaction for a character like Grenouille, and I'm really not sure why he was so calm about the scent leaving the world forever in the book.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think I liked the part where he kills the final girl a bit better in the movie as well. Because it's from Richis's point of view, that scene is played out like a horror movie and really serves to build up the tension. In the book, on the other hand, it's all from Grenouille's point of view, so we just get his cold and methodical thinking. He even tells us over and over again that he can smell the rest of the household sleeping, so there's no suspense.

But these are just small complaints. The book was amazing and absolutely disgusting. I loved the way the world was captured in smells. It was clearly difficult since our language is so visually based. But Suskind managed to avoid simply writing "the room smelled like there was a fire in the corner, and an old woman sitting in a rocking chair." Rather, each of these individual smells would be broken down into their smelling components, like the type of wood being burned, or the old cheesy smell of the woman. Again, I can't emphasize enough how disgusting the book was, but it was a great fun reading!

Kwaidan by Lefcadio Hearn

Read: 27 October, 2008

This is a small, thin book with seventeen short stories (some barely more than a page or two, others a little longer) and three "insect studies." Most of the stories are old supernatural tales, but the author writes from his own experiences sometimes (one short story and two of the insect studies, if memory serves).

It's a short read and an interesting one. Far from an in-depth look at the Japanese supernatural, these are rather short vignettes that provide a beginner's taste. Overall, I found them interesting and thought-provoking.

The insect studies are very different. The Butterfly chapter does still discuss Japanese (and Chinese) mythology, but these are mostly put aside for the chapters on Ants and Mosquitoes. For this reason, these studies may be disappointing for readers who are interested solely in mythology and don't have a taste for idle musings. For my own part, I found them just as interesting as the stories of strange things found in most of the book.

Vampire Chronicles #3: The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

Read: 26 August, 2008

In some ways, I'd say this was the worst of the three. In other ways, I think it was better than The Vampire Lestat. The story was more interesting, certainly, but the writing style was fragmented and annoying.

I think that Rice is much better at writing in the third person. That being said, the whole multiple narrators thing was infuriating. Every time I'd get really into one narrative, she'd rip me away and into a story I wasn't all that interested in. This was especially true near the end where novel kept bouncing back and forth between Lestat's experiences with Akasha and Marahet's legend of the twins. I desperately wanted to hear more about the twins and I would read those bits ravaneously. Then, I'd be thrust into Lestat's whining: "I love Akasha, she's evil, I love her, she's evil, I'm tempted by blood, I love her, she's evil, mmmm, she's so tasty!" Booooring.

This was made doubly frustrating because it was a good opportunity to explore whether or not Akasha was right. Lestat is never tempted by her plan. He is only tempted by her - even then, though, I never really got the feel that he loved her (beyond how tasty her blood was) until after she had died and he had to mourn. In fact, most of the arguments characters brought up against her plan were as irrational as the plan itself! "But but... it's so mean!" No one mentioned the simple fact that Akasha's world wouldn't work and that she herself was proof! As a female, while still human, she had ordered the torture of Mekare and Maharet. So why does she think that all other women would be all nice and friendly? As a vampire, she was commanding the mass slaughter of all men - proof in and of itself that women would be just as capable of genocide, if they had the chance, as men! But does anyone bring this up? Of course not.

Rice also seemed to experience with syntax in a really annoying way. "With leather straps they'd been bound [...] Naked to the waist they were." It breaks up the flow and is just a pain to read.

There were also inconsistencies between this book and The Vampire Lestat. For example, the final portion of Lestat describes the concert, which would have meant it was written after the book it was included in was published. If we assume this was added later, that would have meant that it had to be written right about the same time as The Queen of the Damned. Despite this, Lestat never mentions Jesse at the concert (instead, it has an anonymous biker jumping on stage). Considering how important this becomes, it should have been mentioned - if only as "and then a really nice looking red-head jumped on stage!"

And, finally, the names annoy me. Why would two women with names as Egyptian-sounding as Mekare and Maharet name their daughter something as Semitic-sounding as Miriam? Why would someone from Sumeria be named Akasha, which clearly has Indian roots? Why does Enkil's name not fit phonetically with Egyptian names? If names had been chosen a little more carefully, it would have made this whole series a great deal more readable.

I did enjoy it, though. I know I'm complaining a lot, but it was an okay read. I thought the climax was very well handled - or, at least, the resolution was worth trudging through all of the novel's flaws. I do think Jesse should have gotten a whole lot more page time, though. In fact, I would have liked to have had it all written just from her perspective and put as a "secret file from the Talamasca vault" or something like that. It would have made the multiple narratives more credible since she would have had her reason to collect data, while Lestat seems far too concerned with his own problems to have cared enough even to have bothered with the others.

Vampire Chronicles #2: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

Read: 14 July, 2008

Overall, I'd say that this was a good book. It wasn't fabulous, but it passed the time in an entertaining way. It didn't provide all that much food for thought. Despite the near-constant philosophical ramblings, I found that most of them contradicted with my own observations far too much to be thought-provoking (for example, one character explains that mortals will believe just about anything other than a supernatural explanation, preferring even the most ridiculous natural explanation - never mind all the talk about finding a good parking space being a "gift from god" or all the "real haunting" TV shows one sees on television). I do think that I liked it better than Interview With a Vampire, but that might just be because Interview was a bit of a disappointment after having seen and loved its movie.

The writing itself was fairly strong - not great, but better than average. There were some parts where present tense was used, despite the bulk of the novel being in the past tense. This wasn't done for any discernible purpose and it made those passages seem awkward.

I did take some issue with the narrative voice. For one thing, the start of the novel had a completely different tone to the rest. There's some half-hearted attempt to explain this, that Lestat is so old and has lived through so many linguistic eras that he switches between them from time to time. All well and good except that the voice of the first couple pages is never used again. All that explanation stuffed into the story when Rice could have just as easily re-written the first few pages to match the tone of the rest. Not to mention the fact that the voice of the first few pages was incredibly annoying, to the point that I considered not reading on.

My other major issue with the narrative voice is that it is very similar to the one used in Interview With a Vampire. There was no distinct personality showing through as I have seen in so many other novels. The Vampire Lestat was a novel best written in first person, and that was a good choice, but in terms of skill, Rice ought to have stuck to third person instead. This became even clearer during Armand and Marius' narratives. If I put the book down and picked it up again later, I could easily forget who was telling that part of the story. It's forgiveable in this case because of the plot - that Lestat is re-telling the stories he'd been told in the past. So it's conceivable that he is re-telling them in his own way. But this doesn't excuse the likeness of Louis's and Lestat's stories.

There was also a bit of sexism present, as in Interview With a Vampire. Female characters are given very little page time. In this book, there is the added discussion about how female vampires are unpredictable or mad. That being said, however, the narrators of Interview With a Vampire and The Vampire Lestat are both male and it is a character who makes the statement about female vampires. I am willing to accept that the sexism of these novels is from the characters and not the novel itself, especially since Claudia and Gabrielle both seem to be strong and independent (in mind, though Claudia, of course, is completely dependent in other ways) woman with clear and consistent goals. In many ways, I've found those two (with the possible addition of Eleni) to be more interesting than Louis, Lestat, Armand, or Marius. It's a shame they don't get their own stories (or maybe they do? If anyone reading this review knows of a Rice book where any of these three gets their own story, I'd love to know which one).

And my final complaint is with the names. I've never heard a French name like "Lestat." Just saying it, it doesn't sound French at all, even if the final T is pronounced (which would be a no-no in modern French). I don't know where Rice got it from, but I personally think it was a very poor choice. It killed my suspension of disbelief every time it came up because I would try to say it in French, as I do with Louis's name, and it just wouldn't work.

I loved the inconsistencies between Interview With a Vampire and the Vampire Lestat. I also liked that the explanations in the Vampire Lestat for questions that had been left unanswered fit well into a separate narrative of their own. This was something that had bothered be in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The subsequent novels attempted to explain away a lot of what had happened in the first, and this killed the jokes and made the subsequent novels feel like they were mostly there as additional material rather than stand-alone books. This was something Rice successfully avoided.

P.S.: What's the deal with Typhon? Why is the name Set never mentioned? If anyone knows, I'd love to hear it!

Vampire Chronicles #1: Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

Read: 26 June, 2008

Overall, I did enjoy the book. I just found it disappointing in several ways. My first complaint is that the timeline was rather fuzzy. We are told at the beginning that the story starts in the 1790s. He then says that two hundred years pass before going to Paris, which really doesn't make all that much sense. I know that part of the whole point is that Louis survives by being so self-absorbed that he doesn't really notice the time flying by, but it would have been nice to have some indication of how much time has been passing. I would have liked a better sense of the change in eras rather than the "and everything was the same because my life sucks, boohoo" that we ended up getting.

The book was definitely a page-turner, but I felt vaguely disappointed whenever I did turn the page - especially in the first fifty or so pages. I think it's mostly because I enjoyed the movie so much and people have been telling me for years about how wonderful the book is. So I came to it with such high expectations that it couldn't possibly have lived up to them.

Louis's whining got on my nerves a bit. Most of the time, it was overshadowed by my interest in the plot so I didn't notice it. But there were passages that just went on and on about how terrible it is to be a vampire and how damned he is and how he doesn't know if God exists and so forth and it made me just want to smack him and tell him to get over it. I think that Lestat says it best at the end of the movie where he tells the interiewer that Louis always did whine a lot.

Speaking of the interviewer, I was very disappointed by that part of the book. Having an interviewer was a great opportunity for a dialogue between the reader (using the boy as a surrogate) and Louis - an opportunity that Rice misses. Instead, the boy is just an annoying disruption in the first portion of the story, completely non-existent for the second portion, and only came back at the very end for the punchline. It's as if the entire set up of an interview was just so that the boy could deliver the "final lesson" to the reader or something. Don't get me wrong, the punchline was good and I'm glad it was there, but it shouldn't have been the only reason for the boy's presence. There was wasted opportunity there and I can't help but feel let down.

Other than that, though, I did enjoy it. I liked the abusive boyfriend kind of angle to it. Claudia was a great character. All in all, I'd say that it's a great page-turner for a lazy afternoon, but not much more than that.

The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe

Read: 5 May, 2008

After reading The Monk, I thought that the Gothic genre was pretty neat-o. So I looked up for some other books in the genre and The Mysteries of Udolpho kept coming up, so I took a chance and bought it. It took me eons to read. In fact, I did give up at one point and read Tom Sawyer and Hearts in Atlantis before picking it up again. But I have an obsession with finishing every book that I start, so I was determined. I took notes while I was reading of everything I didn't like, so I will go through negatives first:

The biggest negative is the pacing. A full two hundred and change pages pass before anything happens. That's right, the first third of the novel is essentially a travel narrative with some old dying guy and his personality-less daughter as the travellers. Now, there's nothing wrong with a novel that toys with crossing genres and becoming a travel narrative (I did like Black Mountain, after all), but the descriptions of the scenery were altogether too Romantic for my tastes. Romantics are as stuck up, pompous, and self-absorbed as the Victorians, but a trait I find endearing in the latter is made annoying in the former by being caste under the pretence of artistic genius (those of you who know me know that I make a distinction between "artists" and "artistes" - I am incapable of being in the same room as the latter without wanting to hit something, whereas I find artists to be, on the whole, quite nice people).

On the whole, only about a third of the novel takes place in the titular location. But there was more to it than just a slow-moving novel (which, again, in and of itself is not a terrible thing). What made it infuriating was that the main character seemed to be suffering from Alzheimer's. A new plot line, or short-term goal, would be introduced and she would resolve to take care of it. It would then be dropped entirely as though it had never happened until dozens of pages later where she suddenly remembers and takes care of it. A good example of this occurs near the beginning where Emily's father instructs her to burn some secret letters. She gives him a solemn promise, goes to where the letters are, and then spends pages and pages moaning about how sad life is before she finally gets to the letters. At this point, my next complaint is made into example. Emily reads a bit of the letter, doesn't tell the reader what it says, alludes to how "shocking!" the content of the letters is several times, but does not actually explain what she read until a full 450 pages later!

That's right, dear Ms. Radcliffe seemed to have lived under the mistaken impression that frustration = suspense. Several times, Emily makes shocking discoveries that horrify her, but she refuses to tell the reader what those discoveries are. Worse yet, Emily will seem to forget all about them as soon as she is done being shocked - at least until another shocking discovery prompts her memory.

In fact, Emily's forgetfulness is a major theme in the novel. It comes up as part of another complaint that I will mention in a minute. For example, when she and her suitor, Valancourt, are forced to part, he makes her promise that she will always look at the setting sun. The idea is that he would do the same and that they would be "together" even when apart by knowing that they are both looking on the same object. Sweet and romantic, right? Well, yes, it is... the first night. Emily whines away while she watches the sun set. This promise is then never mentioned again. Never. By either Emily or Valancourt. This isn't just a case of sunsets not being mentioned because there are oodles of sunsets in the novel. Emily just doesn't seem to care that much about the "solemn promise" she makes to the love of her life.

Which is my next complaint: there are two Emilys in the novel. One is the Emily constructed by the narrator, the Emily that we are told about. The other is the Emily we see, through the things she says and the actions she takes (or, in this case, doesn't take). These two Emilys are rarely in agreement.

Another complaint I had was that objects and characters appear and disappear depending on the plot's need for them. A major example of this is Emily's dog. Whenever it is needed to wake Emily up to spot an intruder, or growl when there is a need for absolute silence, it will appear. As soon as it's done filling out this function, the dog promptly disappears. Relating to the last point I made, the narrator tells us again and again how much Emily loves this dog, feels comforted by this dog, and dotes on this dog. And yet, we never once see her cuddling it, petting it, stroking it, looking to it for comfort when afraid, or anything else of the sort.

There are other continuity errors. For example, Emily escapes Udolpho in the middle of the night, with no warning whatsoever, and from a place that is not her bedroom. And yet she somehow has the presence of mind to carry with her a large box of letters and all the drawings she's made since going to the castle. Maybe she hides them under her skirts or something?

The final negative that I will mention is that Valancourt is a thoroughly despicable character. Honestly, Jane Eyre's Rochester is a sensitive and romantic boyfriend compared to this guy. He bears every mark of the abusive boyfriend. Not only does he accuse Emily of not really loving him whenever she doesn't want to do something he wants, he will also stalk her (to the point that her gardener shoots him thinking that he's a burglar) when she refuses to marry him. After all that, he flies into a rage when she (rightfully) wonders if he loves her, trying to physically restrain her! And for all the noble chivalry the narrator keeps telling us he expresses, he allows his girlfriend to be taken into a situation that he knows is dangerous for her and doesn't even try to save her from it (except, of course, trying to terrify her into marrying him with threats of violence - you know, from other men... that he'd be saving her from... obviously...).

He's also just so whiny. It's totally pathetic. He knows that he is distressing her, she's in tears and begging him to stop and leave her alone, but he just whines and whines and whines at her. He will even admit that he is distressing her and that he should stop, but the very next sentence out of his mouth is more whining!

All in all, I found that he was incredibly similar in his behaviour to the Count Morano - the bad guy, the guy we are supposed to hate, the guy Emily spends a third of the novel terrified of. The way he acts toward Emily is nearly identical. In fact, he even tries to scare Emily into marrying him by telling her that Morano will hurt her - using the same tactic the Count uses, except that he's passing off the obvious part of the blame to someone else!

There's plenty more that I could mention, but those are the major points and this post is getting pretty long. In terms of positives, I must admit that I struggle to find any. There were some instances of humour that had me chuckling, but they were too few and too far between to really count them as any kind of saving grace. I did like that every single instance of the supernatural was resolved (even if poorly) and shown to have perfectly natural explanations. And, of course, the novel is a classic and has a lot to offer if looked at as a historical document.

All in all, it's a book that I hated reading but that I am glad to have read. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, though. This is one of the few books that I think might be better enjoyed in a heavily abridged or cliff-note form.

The Beetle by Richard Marsh

Read: 2004

As wikipedia puts it, The Beetle is a xenophobic story about an evil oriental antagonist wreaking havoc about London with his powers of hypnotism and shape-shifting. Unfortunately, I don't remember too many of the plot details as it's been about two years since I've read it.

I do remember enjoying the novel quite a bit, though. I've always enjoyed the use of multiple narrators and the suspense is well-maintained from begining to end. The only flaw, and, unfortunately, its a real doozy, is the ending. The tension mounts and mounts and the climax builds and then BAM! Train crash! Damsel saved and evil guy killed! How disappointing...