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