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A review by lori85
The Purple Cloud by M.P. Shiel
2.0
Like many novels of its era, The Purple Cloud was originally serialized and sadly exhibits the format's tedious verbiage. We're talking rambling lists that would give Georges Perec a headache and repetitious episodes of protagonist Adam wandering from place to place, finding dead bodies, and ruminating on said bodies. The second part is a silly, contrived .
Which is a shame, because Shiel's prose can be quite beautiful and the story starts off very strongly. It is easy to see why Lovecraft praised The Purple Cloud, with its initial imagery of the smallness and helplessness of the individual in a dead world and dark future, and his subsequent mental deterioration. If only Shiel had stuck with those themes and not his hokey deus ex machina that gave humanity's tragedy cosmic meaning and actually imparted a moral.
Spoiler
retelling of Adam and Eve that's also loaded with racism and misogyny. Leda is a blank slate barely out of her teens who needs Adam to teach her everything. Both are white, and it is their new relationship that heals Adam's mad pyromaniac and egomaniacal tendencies, during which he had adopted the aspect of a stereotypical sultan, and inspires his return to European dress. The narrative is quite preoccupied with strange, exotic non-white and non-Western foreigners; the implication is that the world is better off without themWhich is a shame, because Shiel's prose can be quite beautiful and the story starts off very strongly. It is easy to see why Lovecraft praised The Purple Cloud, with its initial imagery of the smallness and helplessness of the individual in a dead world and dark future, and his subsequent mental deterioration. If only Shiel had stuck with those themes and not his hokey deus ex machina that gave humanity's tragedy cosmic meaning and actually imparted a moral.