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A review by roseice
The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
3.0
Ann Radcliffe is fantastic. Her descriptions are lush, detailed and full, albeit dense. Incredibly dense. I have to be in a certain mood to appreciate them, and rather than reading them in novel-sized sections (especially a novel of this length), I think they are better appreciated over a longer period of time. I had to go through this one more quickly than I would've liked, because I read it for school; the first two volumes were fabulous, but at times they dragged. So much was happening it was hard to reconcile it all once I finished.
A great story, but definitely more detailed in parts than it needed to be, and with an excess of unnecessary characters (except the guide. Arguably unnecessary, but he had me grinning, and I never tired of listening to Schedoni scold and yell at him). But Radcliffe's dialogue is one of my favourite things. So clever and fresh--especially Schedoni's. (By "fresh," I mean "archaic," yes, but it's so novel and beautiful and more people need to speak like that nowadays. We have lost something precious.)
A great story, but definitely more detailed in parts than it needed to be, and with an excess of unnecessary characters (except the guide. Arguably unnecessary, but he had me grinning, and I never tired of listening to Schedoni scold and yell at him). But Radcliffe's dialogue is one of my favourite things. So clever and fresh--especially Schedoni's. (By "fresh," I mean "archaic," yes, but it's so novel and beautiful and more people need to speak like that nowadays. We have lost something precious.)