About stories of all kinds
[W]hile I have Udolpho to read, I feel as if nobody could make me miserable. Oh! The dreadful black veil! -Catherine Morland in Northanger Abbey The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) by Ann Radcliffe Since hearing about Radcliffe's influence on the gothic literary movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I have been interested in reading… Continue reading Two Towers, Pt. 1: The Mysteries of Udolpho
Here's the problem with making a complex secondary character a main character in their own novel: they lose some of the mystical quality that makes them interesting to the reader to try and interpret. Also, quite often their "voice" as the perspective character loses some of what their established personality has been. They are no… Continue reading Reclaimed: Murtagh Review
The Story Through the catalyst of the Shelbys, a Kentucky family, falling into debt, the fate of their slaves changes forever. At the prospect of her young son being sold away from her, Eliza takes him and runs for Canada without fully understanding the distance or difficulties involved, trusting that her husband will come after… Continue reading Other People’s Glass Houses: Uncle Tom’s Cabin Review
I guess a St. Patrick's Day post is a tradition now. Anyway, this is the fourth year in a row for me, which is probably the longest I've ever stuck with anything in my life. I've done a post about green books, books with "green" in the titles, and Irish mythology books, so now I… Continue reading 5 Irish Fiction Recommendations for St. Patrick’s Day
A well-known novel of the American south, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird is a challenging look at the history of race-relations and the process of a child coming to terms with another side of her familiar, safe community of Maycomb. Scout, her older brother Jem, and their friend Dill play around at constructing a… Continue reading One-Shot Finch: To Kill a Mockingbird
...a mysterious history is put forth by the lawyer Lightwood about the Harmon family and its fortune... No sooner has the tale been told than Lightwood is called upon to attend a body... identified as the long lost heir to that very same family's fortune.
Donna Tartt [has an] incredibly beautiful, smooth, flowing writing style that simply sings to your senses as you read along. So much so, it disguises the fact that there is actually very little happening in the plot, character beats, or anything else besides.
It is... a perfect candidate for the label of "dark academia" with its artist main characters, themes of guilt, crime, and decay threaded with beauty and tainted love.
It impressed me at times as a dark mirror to some of P.G. Wodehouse's writings, for its comedy and caricature, though Wodehouse tends to be more forgiving in outlook, whereas Waugh does not shy away from brutal consequences.
The House of Mirth is a multi-faceted, in-depth novelization of the difficulty of unmarried young women without a fortune who are nevertheless members of a certain upper-class social circle, and the lengths they must go to maintain their position...
