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octavia_cade 's review for:
The Castle of Otranto
by Horace Walpole
It's like reading a train wreck.
The thing is a disaster. Granted, it's 250+ years old and so the desperately overwrought style has thankfully gone out of fashion, but the plot is even more stunning than the language, in a what-the-hell-is-this? way. It is all ridiculously over the top, and I could not take it at all seriously, and yet it was such a disaster I was entertained despite myself. It's so terrible it's sort of circled round to fun.
I understand, back in the day, it was a shock to the literary system and spawned a number of imitations, so I suppose there's credit to be given for that. The first Gothic novel, if I understand it rightly? Usually these strike me as a mix of horror and romance, and perhaps in 1764 this was horrifying but I'm slightly more inclined to giggle. There's the odd uncanny bit, but really - how horrifying can the appearance of a giant helmet be, when on the second page it crushes a young and sickly bridegroom like the iron bonnet of doom that it is? And while the book ends in a marriage, it's not exactly a happy one. The wanted bride was killed off in a manner even more ridiculous than the bonnet of doom, and the remaining young people are joined in holy melancholy because they're the leftovers, or the left-alive, and it doesn't matter that the replacement bride is second best because they're to be miserable in their loss together, forever. I'm sorry, but romance that is not. I stand by my earlier judgement: it's a train wreck, but I am a morbidly curious creature, apparently, and train wrecks are clearly not beyond my powers of enjoyment.
The thing is a disaster. Granted, it's 250+ years old and so the desperately overwrought style has thankfully gone out of fashion, but the plot is even more stunning than the language, in a what-the-hell-is-this? way. It is all ridiculously over the top, and I could not take it at all seriously, and yet it was such a disaster I was entertained despite myself. It's so terrible it's sort of circled round to fun.
I understand, back in the day, it was a shock to the literary system and spawned a number of imitations, so I suppose there's credit to be given for that. The first Gothic novel, if I understand it rightly? Usually these strike me as a mix of horror and romance, and perhaps in 1764 this was horrifying but I'm slightly more inclined to giggle. There's the odd uncanny bit, but really - how horrifying can the appearance of a giant helmet be, when on the second page it crushes a young and sickly bridegroom like the iron bonnet of doom that it is? And while the book ends in a marriage, it's not exactly a happy one. The wanted bride was killed off in a manner even more ridiculous than the bonnet of doom, and the remaining young people are joined in holy melancholy because they're the leftovers, or the left-alive, and it doesn't matter that the replacement bride is second best because they're to be miserable in their loss together, forever. I'm sorry, but romance that is not. I stand by my earlier judgement: it's a train wreck, but I am a morbidly curious creature, apparently, and train wrecks are clearly not beyond my powers of enjoyment.