Recent reading
Sep. 5th, 2019 06:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeMy last few reads have been very sensational: a taste of melodrama from the eighteenth to the twentieth century!
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1910; translated by David Coward, 2012). I'd managed to osmose quite a bit about the musical, and know a few of the songs (and, of course, have read Maskerade), but I've never actually seen it, so I went into this not really knowing how the plot would go. I was a little surprised at how much of a romance it isn't: the Phantom is shown as an object of pity but not really one of admiration or attraction, and most of the drama of the plot involves the other characters' not at all equivocal attempts to escape and thwart him. The writing was fairly clunky, both in pacing and at the sentence level, although I'm not sure how much of that was the translation.
Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins (1872). Quite a bit smaller-scale than the other Wilkie Collins novels I've read so far, but still dramatic enough. The book follows the adventures of Lucilla Finch, a young blind woman living a quiet life in rural Sussex, as she becomes entangled in various schemes, plots and deceptions involved in a love triangle. Besides some surprising medical details (some of which seemed rather implausible, but it turns out long-term exposure to silver compounds really can turn your skin purple—who knew!) and an interesting look at Victorian attitudes towards blindness, the highlight of this book is its narrator. This is Lucilla's companion Madame Pratolungo, a French republican and ardent revolutionary, and the reading experience is greatly improved by the random passionate leftist asides she scatters throughout the narration. Recommended.
The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796). One of the most (in)famous Gothic novels ever written, and not undeservedly so. To be clear, this isn't a good book: the pacing and structure are all over the place, the narrative veers into random asides and introduces new plot elements from thin air whenever the author feels like it, and none of the characters has much of a personality beyond their levels of Virtue or Depravity. However, it makes up for all this by being so over-the-top melodramatic that it loops back round into being pretty enjoyable for sheer ridiculousness. (And now, random lengthy backstory featuring German bandits! Now, you thought she was dead but actually the evil prioress faked her death and locked her up underground indefinitely! Now, an angry mob burns down the convent! Now, a sudden and unexpected deal with the devil! etc. etc. etc.) I can't exactly say I liked it, but I can see what Catherine Morland and her peers were getting so worked up about.
The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux (1910; translated by David Coward, 2012). I'd managed to osmose quite a bit about the musical, and know a few of the songs (and, of course, have read Maskerade), but I've never actually seen it, so I went into this not really knowing how the plot would go. I was a little surprised at how much of a romance it isn't: the Phantom is shown as an object of pity but not really one of admiration or attraction, and most of the drama of the plot involves the other characters' not at all equivocal attempts to escape and thwart him. The writing was fairly clunky, both in pacing and at the sentence level, although I'm not sure how much of that was the translation.
Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins (1872). Quite a bit smaller-scale than the other Wilkie Collins novels I've read so far, but still dramatic enough. The book follows the adventures of Lucilla Finch, a young blind woman living a quiet life in rural Sussex, as she becomes entangled in various schemes, plots and deceptions involved in a love triangle. Besides some surprising medical details (some of which seemed rather implausible, but it turns out long-term exposure to silver compounds really can turn your skin purple—who knew!) and an interesting look at Victorian attitudes towards blindness, the highlight of this book is its narrator. This is Lucilla's companion Madame Pratolungo, a French republican and ardent revolutionary, and the reading experience is greatly improved by the random passionate leftist asides she scatters throughout the narration. Recommended.
The Monk by Matthew Lewis (1796). One of the most (in)famous Gothic novels ever written, and not undeservedly so. To be clear, this isn't a good book: the pacing and structure are all over the place, the narrative veers into random asides and introduces new plot elements from thin air whenever the author feels like it, and none of the characters has much of a personality beyond their levels of Virtue or Depravity. However, it makes up for all this by being so over-the-top melodramatic that it loops back round into being pretty enjoyable for sheer ridiculousness. (And now, random lengthy backstory featuring German bandits! Now, you thought she was dead but actually the evil prioress faked her death and locked her up underground indefinitely! Now, an angry mob burns down the convent! Now, a sudden and unexpected deal with the devil! etc. etc. etc.) I can't exactly say I liked it, but I can see what Catherine Morland and her peers were getting so worked up about.
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Date: Sep. 6th, 2019 06:32 am (UTC)It is also quite unfair to judge a book by its translation. The translator might be good with prose but sometimes, languages just don't translate well from one to another. Stuffs that sound good in one language might not sound good in the other language.
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Date: Sep. 6th, 2019 07:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 7th, 2019 04:30 am (UTC)Interesting to read your thoughts on The Monk. I was always curious about it because of Northanger Abbey.
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Date: Sep. 7th, 2019 04:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 8th, 2019 09:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 8th, 2019 05:02 pm (UTC)