Reviews

The Murders in the Rue Morgue and Other Tales by Edgar Allan Poe

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aimeesbookishlife's review against another edition

3.0

I bought this book mostly for the titular story and ‘The Purloined Letter’ because I finally finished reading the complete Sherlock Holmes stories last year and I heard that Poe’s character Dupin had inspired Conan Doyle to create his own gentleman detective. (Holmes and Watson even discuss Dupin in one story but I can't remember which one.)
There are some key similarities between Dupin and Holmes: both of them have strong analytical abilities, use deductive reasoning, are consulted by friends in the local police force, and have a housemate who acts as narrator.

The rest of the collection is a bit hit-and-miss. A lot of the stories were really dense with huge descriptive passages over several pages, which is a bit much in a short story. Others, like Eleonora, didn’t really seem to have a point. To the modern reader some of the plot twists might be a bit obvious – for instance if the narrator goes out of his way to explain why they didn’t nail down the coffin in the basement, it’s a sure sign that we haven’t seen the last of the deceased – but I expect that these kinds of tales were very novel when they were first published, before these were well-known tropes.

HIGHLIGHTS:
- The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter, the two Dupin stories in this collection, which were both great
- The Tell-Tale Heart, a short story I read in school which was enjoyable to revisit
- The Oval Portrait, where a portrait was able to creepily steal the life out of the person depicted in it
- The analysis at the end of the book, written by DH Lawrence, which explores the key themes in some of the stories (such as Ligeia and the House of Usher)

LOWLIGHTS:
- The Man of the Crowd – to say the ending was unsatisfying is a huge understatement
- The Fall of the House of Usher – the ‘twist’ was a bit obvious
- The Black Cat – I know it's a double-standard but I find it much harder to read about animal abuse than to read about humans being violent to each other, so this one was a tough read for me

jodiesbookishposts's review against another edition

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3.0

I really really didn’t get on with Poe’s writing style. It was just so over written. I felt like all the tension and pace was drained out with overly purple prose. There was only one or two stories in the collection I actually got on with and would say we’re five star. Some were okay and some were just mind numbing.

I must say I had higher expectations. But, we can’t all love everything and maybe Poe just isn’t one for me.

I think I might have been better off cherry picking stories to read over a longer period of time than trying to read them all in the month. This might have made them easier to digest.

briancrandall's review against another edition

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3.0

Truth is not always in a well. In fact, as regards the more important knowledge, I do believe that she is invariably superficial. The depth lies in the valleys where we seek her, and not upon the mountain-tops where she is found. [117]

lyd_kenning's review against another edition

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dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

3.5

ullsi's review against another edition

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4.0

It took me a little while to get into Poe’s long-winded and punctuation-filled sentences, but when I did, I understood why his stories became - and have stayed - so popular. He is great at creating eerie atmospheres in just a few pages, and many of the horror elements are disturbing even though they were written almost 200 years ago. I liked the horror stories better than the detective mysteries since the latter often resulted in long, braggy monologues, but it was fun to read early examples of this type of story.