Reviews

I know, I know, how could I call myself a gothic lover without ever having read this? Well, now I have, and I’m glad I did. Bohemian meets horror, a match made in heaven for me… with a little touch of twisted romance, but we’ll let it slide. Phantom of the Opera is the only “nice guy” redemption (and we all know what the quotation marks mean) I will allow.

I love the atmosphere of this novel, ballet and music and high society, and death and myths and mystery, and clever tricks and deception. As I also thought when reading Villette, it is quite common for seemingly supernatural stories to reveal themselves as perfectly rational in the end, but what is particularly interesting about this novel is that the logical truth isn’t any less creepy. The Phantom is scary, yes, but Erik? Erik is terrifying. Erik is one of those men who’d make me choose the bear. To get to love, he has no scruple, except is it really love he feels for Christine if her wellbeing isn’t of interest to him? Let me reword it, he has no scruple to get to what he wants: threats, murder, blackmail and all of his horrible crimes, all perfectly valid means to an end as a sort of compensation for the way he’s been treated and hurt, even by nature itself. Love and revenge, revenge and love blend into one in his twisted mind, a prey of ambiguous appearance; yet, no matter how evil, how clever that mind is! All of his secrets, his methods, his acts, his applied scenography skills kept me glued to the page, who would have even thought of such things!

I found it fascinating how smartly he appealed to Christine, how he exploited the figure of the Angel of Music the same way he did with the legendary Phantom of the Opera, forever tying the poor girl to himself out of unjust gratitude, of the absurd belief that her musical skills are all just thanks to him, that she’d simply lose it all were she to refuse to submit to him and forget her true feelings for the Viscount. It was pure manipulation, but genial in its conception, despicable yet so interesting to read about. Once again, Erik is nothing but the stereotypical “nice guy” who isn’t nice at all, and that tries to corrupt people into loving him because “he deserves it”, when in fact judging from the way he treats them he really doesn’t. He does seem to redeem himself in the end, which I normally wouldn’t be happy about, but I’ll close an eye this time: he is still portrayed as a monster, although a sad and unfortunate one, so I guess no one is going to be tempted to take him as a model anyway.

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5.0

Some books have survived the test of time for a reason. Simply fantastic writing and fascinating storytelling, I will never be tired of reading this lovely literary masterpiece <3