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katjah's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
3.5
Ik was blij verrast door dit boek. Het was leuk geschreven, een boeiend verhaal en had interessante karakters. Ik had iets meer Gotisch/mystieke elementen verwacht, maar vond het een leuk boek om te lezen en wilde steeds verder.
saintmaud's review against another edition
slow-paced
interesting.... not what I expected I was going to get into, there wasn't much of a gothic atmosphere nor did it make the aristocratic setting very convincing. The class war background was intriguing but ultimately wasn't explored further, mostly everything just felt underdeveloped to make space for a very french character study of nicholas.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Medical content, Classism, Death, Child death, Toxic relationship, Fatphobia, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Pregnancy, Drug abuse, and Xenophobia
hananhn's review against another edition
4.0
As always, the book is much better than the movie. The movie focused more on the relationship and the romance, while the book touched upon serious social and political matters in that era.
zoemaja's review against another edition
4.0
This was an impulse download when browsing the library's Overdrive site for new audio books. I do love a good Gothic Novel and this one looks like just the sort of gloomy and thrilling and spooky story that makes for good frothy summer reading.
audio, library
audio, library
ladyeremite's review against another edition
3.0
So, very mixed feelings.
My first takeaway is - wow, this is not a book that ages well. There was the gratuitous "magical old black woman," who knows all about the house's dark evil, and whose appearance in the book - no more than a caricature and a plot device in the drama of rich white people - caused me to literally roll my eyes. It was also really hard for me to get over the treatment of Johanna, which is deeply misogynistic and flat out appalling. It would be one thing if the reader gets this just from Miranda, whom I think the reader is supposed to feel is both innocent and a bit spoiled, who is incapable of being sympathetic to the wife and thinks of her as greedy, gluttonous and uninteresting. But Seton uses multiple characters' perspectives to emphasize the woman's dullness and fatness as if we, as the reader, are supposed to share in this disgust. It would have been very simple to just have this be Miranda's callow perspective, by not having these distracting lapses into other characters' POV - indeed, this would have improved the writing throughout. We should not get Nicholas's POV, or the weird Tocqueville wannabe French tourist or even Jeff or Abigail. Keep the POV with her.
I think overall the problem with this book is that it wants to tell us a story about how the bewitching glamor of the Gothic romance belies its dark, destructive side. Miranda, a farm girl who dreams of a better life, believes that the brooding Byronic hero Nicholas Van Ryn is her prince charming, but comes to understand that he is a sociopath whose social prestige rests on a thoroughly exploitative and unjust system of economic oppression and whose romantic allure is based on crushing the agency and will of the women who love him. As such, like Daphne Du Maurier's contemporaneous Rebecca, this book supposedly functions as a critique of the Gothic romance even as it indulges in its tropes. But the problem is - it doesn't go far enough. It is still deeply beholden to those critiques - the heroine ends the tale by disowning her own desire as complicit, but not really recognizing her own complicity in the nastiness of the system.
Sorry to sound so woke here, but it's just a hard book for someone today to read - which makes me wonder not only how I did read it, but managed to read it in basically the course of 24 hours while feeling guilty about doing so. Such is the dark pleasure of the genre.
My first takeaway is - wow, this is not a book that ages well. There was the gratuitous "magical old black woman," who knows all about the house's dark evil, and whose appearance in the book - no more than a caricature and a plot device in the drama of rich white people - caused me to literally roll my eyes. It was also really hard for me to get over the treatment of Johanna, which is deeply misogynistic and flat out appalling. It would be one thing if the reader gets this just from Miranda, whom I think the reader is supposed to feel is both innocent and a bit spoiled, who is incapable of being sympathetic to the wife and thinks of her as greedy, gluttonous and uninteresting. But Seton uses multiple characters' perspectives to emphasize the woman's dullness and fatness as if we, as the reader, are supposed to share in this disgust. It would have been very simple to just have this be Miranda's callow perspective, by not having these distracting lapses into other characters' POV - indeed, this would have improved the writing throughout. We should not get Nicholas's POV, or the weird Tocqueville wannabe French tourist or even Jeff or Abigail. Keep the POV with her.
I think overall the problem with this book is that it wants to tell us a story about how the bewitching glamor of the Gothic romance belies its dark, destructive side. Miranda, a farm girl who dreams of a better life, believes that the brooding Byronic hero Nicholas Van Ryn is her prince charming, but comes to understand that he is a sociopath whose social prestige rests on a thoroughly exploitative and unjust system of economic oppression and whose romantic allure is based on crushing the agency and will of the women who love him. As such, like Daphne Du Maurier's contemporaneous Rebecca, this book supposedly functions as a critique of the Gothic romance even as it indulges in its tropes. But the problem is - it doesn't go far enough. It is still deeply beholden to those critiques - the heroine ends the tale by disowning her own desire as complicit, but not really recognizing her own complicity in the nastiness of the system.
Sorry to sound so woke here, but it's just a hard book for someone today to read - which makes me wonder not only how I did read it, but managed to read it in basically the course of 24 hours while feeling guilty about doing so. Such is the dark pleasure of the genre.
bookslovejenna's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Five things about Dragonwyck by Anya Seton đź“šđź“šđź“šđź“šđź“š
1. First off - this won’t be for everyone. Being a mid-century gothic romance, some of it just didn’t age well. So, if you’re of a mi d to demand contemporary ideals and norms from a historical work - this won’t be for you. If you’re capable of reading a work in light of its own time period and you enjoy a cheeky gothic romance then this one may be right up your alley. What didn’t age well? Mainly use of force on a marriage night and some fat shaming. There is also racism in this book because the antagonist is racist. It’s not glorified or condoned. The character - not the book - is racist.
2. Now that that is out of the way - this book is so readable! I was enchanted from the very start. Miranda is such a wonderfully developed character that starts young and naĂŻve but over the course of the novel develops a wisdom that comes from hardship and disillusionment.
3. I won’t say that the reader can’t figure out key plot points. As a mystery, this would probably disappoint- but as a gothic romance/coming of age it’s just right.
4. According to the author, she was inspired to write this novel after coming upon a news article from 1849 and that “there was on the Hudson a way of life such as this and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck.”
5. The history in these pages is also quite fascinating if you’re of a historical bent. You’ll meet authors like Poe and learn about the anti-rent wars and Astor Place massacre. All in all a mesmerizingly fascinating reading experience.
1. First off - this won’t be for everyone. Being a mid-century gothic romance, some of it just didn’t age well. So, if you’re of a mi d to demand contemporary ideals and norms from a historical work - this won’t be for you. If you’re capable of reading a work in light of its own time period and you enjoy a cheeky gothic romance then this one may be right up your alley. What didn’t age well? Mainly use of force on a marriage night and some fat shaming. There is also racism in this book because the antagonist is racist. It’s not glorified or condoned. The character - not the book - is racist.
2. Now that that is out of the way - this book is so readable! I was enchanted from the very start. Miranda is such a wonderfully developed character that starts young and naĂŻve but over the course of the novel develops a wisdom that comes from hardship and disillusionment.
3. I won’t say that the reader can’t figure out key plot points. As a mystery, this would probably disappoint- but as a gothic romance/coming of age it’s just right.
4. According to the author, she was inspired to write this novel after coming upon a news article from 1849 and that “there was on the Hudson a way of life such as this and there was a house not unlike Dragonwyck.”
5. The history in these pages is also quite fascinating if you’re of a historical bent. You’ll meet authors like Poe and learn about the anti-rent wars and Astor Place massacre. All in all a mesmerizingly fascinating reading experience.
ri1zhu's review against another edition
2.0
After reading Katherine by Anya Seton and falling in love with her prose, I was eager to read this book. Not only because I loved Katherine, but also because the synopsis of Dragonwyck caught my attention easily.
I see a lot of comparison of this novel to Jane Eyre, and I do understand why regarding the plot and overall tone.
However, I feel as though this book severely lacked the dark atmosphere and tension. We are told that something is not right with Nicholas in the beginning, and that there is a darkness within him. Throughout the first half of the novel, characters such as the Count and Dr. Turner comment on how naïve the main character Miranda is to Nicholas Van Ryn's "interest.” I just wish Seton would have built it up instead of using characters to spell it out for us.
The inclusion of historical characters is something that really doesn't bother me, but I would have enjoyed it more if Seton had given us more depth to the many characters that already existed.
I think the reason I was so disappointed was because I went into it thinking it was a gothic romance. Perhaps if I went into it thinking it was more suspense I might have a better opinion of it, although I feel as though I was spoon-fed the entire time.
I’d probably like this better if I read it at a younger age.
I see a lot of comparison of this novel to Jane Eyre, and I do understand why regarding the plot and overall tone.
However, I feel as though this book severely lacked the dark atmosphere and tension. We are told that something is not right with Nicholas in the beginning, and that there is a darkness within him. Throughout the first half of the novel, characters such as the Count and Dr. Turner comment on how naïve the main character Miranda is to Nicholas Van Ryn's "interest.” I just wish Seton would have built it up instead of using characters to spell it out for us.
The inclusion of historical characters is something that really doesn't bother me, but I would have enjoyed it more if Seton had given us more depth to the many characters that already existed.
I think the reason I was so disappointed was because I went into it thinking it was a gothic romance. Perhaps if I went into it thinking it was more suspense I might have a better opinion of it, although I feel as though I was spoon-fed the entire time.
I’d probably like this better if I read it at a younger age.