A review by fil
Zuleika Dobson by Max Beerbohm

3.0

First thing first: Zuleika is a bitch. She is superficial, kinda dumb and cruel. The Duke is a dunce as are all the other guys in this… comedy? … tragedy? … in this whatever you want to call it. Being flattered by some macho dick who kills himself in a corrida is the first sign that Zuleika is a bad, bad person and makes her the most unlikeable character in the novel. But then you met the Duke: he is as dumb as a post and a pompous ass. Who to hate more? Who to laugh at more? It does not really matter. This is a fun read. As a comedy, this is brilliant, the bloodbath makes for a good chuckle or two and the supernatural element in it is, if not all that well executed, well received. It also works as a tragedy: who is the biggest loser here? Miss Dobson? The Duke? The warden? The other jackasses? For me, it was the warden. Mostly in the background, he is clueless and slow to realise what’s what. It would have been interesting to find out a bit more of his story although what we do get is more than enough to explain how completely oblivious he is.

There were some misses though, too many would-have-been-interesting characters have not been well fleshed out and the author’s digressions were clumsy and, in my opinion, not well placed. It also felt a tad uneven, at some points I was thinking 4 stars and at others it was closer to 2, so I settled for the obvious compromise.