Wednesday, November 21, 2007

The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole


the castle of otranto
horace walpole
c. 1764
128 pages


I read this book as one of the two to be used for my RIP Challenge. I chose this book as it is said to be the first of the gothic fiction genre. I read this one first because it was considerably shorter. I am proud to say I completed my challenge, though I was definitley not a huge fan of this book. Maybe the genre itself I could get more into, but this one in particular just didn't do it for me.

The story itself is fairly simple. And short. Guy dies and in order to save the family line his evil father decides to put aside his own wife and marry his son's bride. However a lot of supernatural stuff stands in the way: spirits, a giant, a mysterious peasant, etc. So, what I didn't like was that at the end you find out that really this guy is mostly evil because his grandfather stole this castle from somebody. This guy didn't steal anything, his grandfather did.

The ending came about pretty aprubtly. I hate that. If all this stuff has been happening, you shouldn't take a page and a half to explain and end the story.

2/5

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