House of the Seven Gables

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Paperback, 1961

Status

Available

Call number

813.3

Collection

Publication

Signet / New American Library, Edition: New Ed, Paperback, 288 pages

Description

Classic Literature. Fiction. HTML: In an old, gloomy New England mansion, a woman opens a shop to support her brother, recently returned from prison. She takes on a border, and a distant relativeâ??a beautiful, lively young womanâ??comes to live with them as well. The fragile bond between this group is shaken by the secret history of the house and their wealthy cousin who wants to take it from them

User reviews

LibraryThing member crazyjster
After 20 years of dragging the book around I finally got past page 7. As a Boston native and spending a great deal of time in Salem near "The House of Seven Gables," I felt as a teacher I should read the book. It was quite difficult to get into...very slow in the beginning, but about half-way
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through the story picks up and the Pyncheon family become interesting. The characters are eccenctric and twisted, and the story well is interestingly weird.
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LibraryThing member Mikalina
The House of the Seven Gables, one for each deadly sin; The scene for the allegory of the corrupted soul of man is set. But who is/are the corrupted soul-s? The present inhabitants of the house, Hepzibah and Clifford, a sister and brother with so refined tastes combined with lack of means that they
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come through as half-witted? Beside them there is but a very respectable and very rich cousin, Jugde Pynchon. Then along comes Holgrave, a daguerrotypist who is taken in as a lodger in the house, and little Phoebe, a young poor but levelheaded cousin, from a distant branch of the family, wandering from the countryside.

The evil will be revealed, through the very architecture of the house and garden, through their small daily tasks and even through the daguerrotypes; The evil trancends superficial traits, and will eventually reveal who it works upon and how.

A satire, a cultural critic and a romance at the same time. All done in a style demonstrating the theory of Trancendentalism. At first difficult to read; But once you decide to stay focused, you are treated to precise characterizations that only can be made using figuratively and poetic language, language that conjures up pictures revealing truths that in themselves are far from poetic.
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LibraryThing member krau0098
I've had a copy of the House of Seven Gables sitting on my bookshelf for a number of years. The poor little book is slightly out of place between a plethora of fantasy and science fiction novels. Every once in a while I try to venture into a different realm of subject. That's the reason I finally
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picked up this book to read. I would have read it sooner but I was forced to read "The Scarlet Letter" in high school and never had the heart to read another Nathaniel Hawthorne novel.

Not expecting much, I have to say I was very impressed with this book. The details got to be a bit much at times. I have to admit there were parts of the book that I scanned quit quickly because I just didn't need to know that much description about a certain thing.

That being said, Hawthorne was very good at clearly painting a picture in my head. I could smell the mustiness of the house, feel the joy when Phoebe entered a room, and feel Clifford's sadness and confusion. What took me by surprise was the sharp wit throughout the book and intellectualness of this wit. Quit often I found myself laughing out loud at some of the dry humor in this book. Also of course there was the mystery of the book which kept you hanging on until the end.

I don't know that I will read any additional Hawthorne novels but I would recommend this as a good example of his work. It is much more interesting and engaging than the Scarlet Letter.
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LibraryThing member atimco
What an odd little story. Nathaniel Hawthorne's second fictional foray into Puritanical New England has the frame of a story — a family curse, an unsolved mystery, a pair of lovers, a properly solemn and hauntworthy mansion — but I find the plot recedes to secondary importance next to the
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character sketches. These are richly drawn, with whole chapters devoted to the examination of one person's inner workings.

The story is an exploration of revenge, atonement, ghosts, mystery, and money. Far in the past, there was a dispute over the land on which the Pyncheon house was built. The harsh Puritan Colonel Pyncheon used his influence to have his opponent, Matthew Maule, executed for witchcraft. Maule cursed the Pyncheon family ("God will give you blood to drink!"), and Colonel Pyncheon died alone in his study the night of the housewarming — choking on his own blood. The present-day mystery comes in with the loss of the deeds to Indian territory that would make the Pyncheons rich again; did Maule's curse destroy them, too?

The current descendants of the Pyncheon line are less imposing, but no less interesting. I'll never forget Hawthorne's opening portrait of Hepzibah Pyncheon, the quintessential old maid of an old family, with all the dignity and hidden torture of poverty. She is not beautiful, is Hepzibah, and her redeeming qualities of faithfulness and compassion are tempered by others less attractive, like querulousness, weakness, and lack of imagination. She is, quite simply, human.

Clifford Pyncheon, Hepzibah's older brother, is finally home after a long imprisonment for the murder of his uncle many years before. His mind is broken and he is a pathetic aesthete, loving beautiful things but twisted by the ugliness of his life's realities. He is another facet of the mystery, because the reader doesn't learn why he was imprisoned (and whether or not he committed the crime) until the very end.

Into this oppressive atmosphere comes the young and lovely Phoebe, a distant cousin in the Pyncheon family tree who soon becomes indispensable to her older relations. Of Phoebe I have less to say; she is quite a winning creature on the pages of the book, but Hepzibah is by far the more memorable.

Holgrave, the lodger, is another interesting character, but he too recedes behind a more flamboyantly drawn character, Judge Jaffrey Pyncheon. In Jaffrey Pyncheon the harsh and unrelenting spirit of old Colonel Pyncheon lives again, but this time under a highly respectable guise. Hawthorne spends quite a bit of time on Jaffrey, turning him this way and that, trying to pierce the inequities and deficiencies of soul that could produce such a moral monster. I found these examinations to be some of the most riveting passages of the novel.

But then, Hawthorne has always been able to fascinate me with his character studies... I've actually read The Scarlet Letter both for a college assignment and then again later for pleasure (strange, I know). There's just something magnetic about his prose and how he so easily navigates the inner lives of his characters. He makes me believe in them.

I have a more charitable view of the Puritans than does Hawthorne, who counted among his ancestors some who played a role in the Salem Witch trials. The Puritans are people like anyone else, and the notorious members of their tribe always seem to overshadow the Puritan men and women of true godliness and spirituality. What I have read of the Puritans' religious writings has been sterling, despite the popular image they bear of self-righteous cruelty.

I'm not sure I will revisit this book; for all its atmospheric settings and unforgettable characters, it hangs together oddly somehow. Not sure why.
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LibraryThing member DaptoLibrary
We have tackled some big books this year and Perlman’s The Street Sweeper is the last of them. A sweeping (sorry about the pun) novel of over 500 pages, its story content is dense and at times harrowing, but was given huge praise from the majority of our group.
Some of us did find its volume too
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daunting and at best ‘just another holocaust story’, but of those that read to the end, it was thought unanimously a well-written, emotional story that horrified yet moved us.

We found Lamont an endearing character and quickly jumped on his bandwagon for the duration of the ride. Adam was intriguing and contained many characteristics of Perlman’s other protagonists, particularly from Three Dollars and Seven Types of Ambiguity.
And then there was the ‘memory’ theme that wove strong throughout the book …

Memory is a willful dog. It won’t be summoned or dismissed but it cannot survive without you. It can sustain you or feed on you. It visits when it is hungry, not when you are. It has a schedule all its own that you can never know, It can capture you, corner you or liberate you. It can leave you howling and it can make you smile.

This paragraph was sighted by a few of us as being very poignant to the storyline, as there were many aspects and views that needed to come together. And in the end history is written by memories … what they contain and what they miss.

Overall The Street Sweeper scored high with our group. An indication that this novel promises a high quality read for those looking for such.
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LibraryThing member SandSing7
Pales in comparison with Hawthorne's masterpiece, The Scarlet Letter; however, if you're familiar with The Scarlet Letter, it is interesting to see how certain themes and symbols interact between the texts, especially Hawthorne's fascination/repulsion with his Puritan past.
LibraryThing member kant1066
This review contains spoilers.

I have a vague memory of reading “The Scarlet Letter” sometime in middle school, and coming away feeling like you would expect after you’d read a novel about Puritan repression (that’s all I thought it was about at the time). “The House of the Seven Gables”
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was like finding a Hawthorne I’d never known before – one of ghosts, the eternal return of historical memory, and high Gothic romance. This time, it reminded me more of Horace Walpole and Matthew Lewis than it did the cold Puritanism that I once associated with Hester Prynne. In this sense, it stood up to what Hawthorne identified most of his longer fiction as, that is, “romance.”

In the late seventeenth century, the eponymous house (actually inspired by an historical 1688 colonial mansion in Salem) served as the residence of Colonel Pyncheon, who once accused a man named Matthew Maule of sorcery in order to have him hanged, and then stole the land upon which he would eventually build his house. One day, the Colonel keels over at his desk under mysterious circumstances, but his presence and his nefariousness seem to haunt the Pyncheon house in various ways.

Several generations later, Hepzibah and her intellectually challenged brother Clifford come to occupy the house. They are both descendants of the Colonel, but now the family fortune and good reputation have withered away so much that Hepzibah has to open a store in her house to make some extra money, and thinks herself an abject failure because of it. Holgrave, a daguerrotypist, rents a room from Hepzibah upstairs. One day, a distant relation to both Clifford and Hepzibah named Phoebe Pyncheon visits and manages to quickly change the whole tenor of the house: she is able to bring vim and vigor to the Hepzibah’s failing penny shop, and she gives Clifford the companionship and attention that he needs. Just as soon as she appears, however, she leaves again and the house falls into its former dilapidated state.

Judge Pyncheon, another member of the family and a wealthy man about town with an eminent reputation, appears at Hepzibah’s house and announces that he wants to institutionalize Clifford. The Judge claims that Clifford knows the whereabouts of certain documents that will allow him access to vast tracts of land in Maine. While waiting to talk to Clifford, the Judge dies in much the same way that the Colonel did so many generations before. Hepzibah and Clifford head to a train station to leave their outre circumstances. Later, Phoebe returns to the house with only the artist Holgrave in residence, and he admits how he has (admittedly, somewhat predictably) always loved her. Hepzibah and Clifford soon return to live there, with Phoebe having inherited all of the Judge’s ill-gotten land. Holgrave proclaims that he is himself a distant relative of Matthew Maule, so long ago accused of conjury. The House of Seven Gables, so long riven by tumult and strife, is finally exorcised by that ultimate mage, love.

I read this mostly as a meditation on the transgressions of history and our inevitable tendency to bear them witness no matter how far removed in time we are from them, two of Hawthorne’s pet concerns. Indeed, it’s interesting how the sins of Colonel Pyncheon seem almost to take place in a prelapsarian past while at the same time having such a profound effect on the characters presently at hand. Hawthorne wonderfully blends the oppressiveness of the past with the stark newness of the present throughout the novel: the figures of the Salem witch trials (one of whom was Judge John Hathorne, Nathaniel’s great-great-grandfather, who found many of the “witches” guilty) haunt the novel in spirit, but so do all kinds of (then) modern technologies, from Holgrave’s daguerreotype, to the train that Hepzibah and Clifford use to escape the ghosts of their pasts. Published in 1851 and with the possibility of freedom from the past being central to the novel, Hawthorne might have meant for this to be, at least in some respects, a commentary on the coming Civil War. As Faulkner, another American equally concerned with the onus of history said, "The past is never dead. It's not even past."

I enjoyed it so much I immediately picked up “The Blithedale Romance,” a review of which will be posted soon.
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LibraryThing member Terpsichoreus
Hawthorne is the equivalent of nudging someone and winking without actually thinking of anything interesting, risque, beautiful, or even useful. It is sad that a man with such a voluminous writing ability was seemingly devoid of any notion of what to do with it.
LibraryThing member countrylife
An American classic. A deep novel, but read shallowly for its mood, setting and history, I enjoyed it, anyway. A house, splendid in its time, but cursed from the beginning, exacts its revenge on the succeeding generations of the family whose forbear did wrong.

Wonderful characterization, witty,
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extremely descriptive. But the ending didn’t hang together for me. Perhaps if I’d taken it more slowly and dug more deeply. Ah well, I’m glad to have finally read it, and enjoyed it very much.
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LibraryThing member BeckyzWorld
I was surprised how much I enjoyed this book when my first impression was it was going to be dark and depressing. Somehow it was still dark but the depressing elements swifted into something like an early form of mystery novel and I was left with the feeling that I liked it. If you have to read a
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dark gloomy setting novel you could do a lot worst than this one I think :)
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LibraryThing member BrendaKlaassen
This is a classic I can say I read, but don't ask me to read it again. I listened to this book for an in-person book discussion. I struggled through the whole book. I always struggle with Hawthorne's books. I do not like Hawthorne's twisted way of telling a story. Hawthorne had many dead ends when
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he was telling the story and it frustrated me to jump from a dead end back to the main story. The characters did not feel like "real" people to me. I was happy to finish this book and move on to a different book.
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LibraryThing member mlbelize
Synopsis:"Nathaniel Hawthorne's gripping psychological drama concerns the Pyncheon family, a dynasty founded on pious theft, who live for generations under a dead man's curse until their house is finally exorcised by love."

Initially I found myself very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed
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this book set in 19th century Puritan New England. There was an eerie quality, a quiet subtle sense of suspense that drew me to find answers without a heart pounding urgency to solve the mysteries behind the inhabitants of the house. I was slowly drawn into the riddles of the Pyncheon family. What is the identity of the boarder in the house and how does he fit into the picture? What has so saddened those gentle people living there? Why is such fear and loathing shown towards their cousin, Judge Pyncheon? What could possibly have been done to them to bring them to these straits?

Hawthorne painted such a vivid picture of Hepzibah Pycheon, the aged owner of the house who finds herself trapped by her heritage and beaten down by life and her fall from a wealthy gentile life to one where she finds herself with the necessity to now earn her own bread although totally ill-equipped to do so.

"These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present - and still more in the future condition of society - they imply, not privilege, but restriction!"

I can picture this woman, I know her and although I could not love her, I grew to admire tremendously yet also pitied her as the book progressed. Here was a woman who had withdrawn herself from society so totally as to be like the walking dead. The cast of characters were each shown to be more flawed and damaged than the next one until we are introduced to Phoebe, a young, gay cousin arriving from the country, bringing life and a measure of happiness back into the house. Hawthorne's beautiful prose flowed so smoothly that I just glided along with it.

On the downside, there were portions of the book that were just a little too saccharine, almost wince causing: " The deepest pathos of Phoebe's voice and song, moreover, came sifted through the golden texture of a cheery spirit, and was somehow so interfused with the quality thence acquired, that one's heart felt all the lighter for having wept at it."

By page 200 the same slow tempo that charmed me at the beginning of the book started instead to cloy. I was losing patience and yearned for something to happen, anything at all, just get to it, give me some answers. When Hawthorne finally revealed the truth about his characters and their history it was anticlimactic, I had already guessed what his revelations would be so there was no surprise left for me.

Overall, I did enjoy the book but did not love it.

My rating: 3.5 out of 5*
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LibraryThing member Pepys
Two venues for mud runs happen to bear the name of the author of The House of the Seven Gables: Hawthorne Racecourse in Cicero, IL, and Hawthorne, NJ. This is perhaps what induced one LT reviewer here to write: "I read somewhere that trying to read Hawthorne is like trying to run through mud."

In a
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rather strange coincidence, John Updike once wrote that "Reading Pynchon is like reading a very long Popeye strip, without the spinach." (Life, 61, No. 19, November 4, 1966) When you know that Hawthorne decided to make the House of the Seven Gables the dwelling of the Pyncheon family, the ancestors of Thomas Pynchon, the similarity of the two analyses is striking. I even wonder if Updike is the author of the comment on Hawthorne in my opening paragraph.

I too experienced falling asleep after 3 pages of The House of the Seven Gables; spending 3 weeks to read it; being interested in the last 3 chapters only; being bored to death by the circumlocutions and the long incised sentences.

But perhaps will I, for all these reasons, remember this book longer than if I had loved it. Strange, isn't it?
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LibraryThing member japaul22
This gothic novel is as much about the setting of the creepy old house as it is about the characters. The building of the house of the seven gables by colonel Pyncheon at the expense of the Maule family begins generations of bad luck for the Pyncheons. When we meet the family, there are only a few
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members left and things are looking bleak for the continuation of the family line. Hawthorne creates a suspenseful mystery around the family and very slowly reveals answers.

I really enjoyed this book. The language was flowery and gothic without being silly and I thought the pacing, while admittedly drawn out, was appropriate.
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LibraryThing member lindseyrivers
I read somewhere that trying to read Hawthorne is like trying to run through mud. This book is no exception. I couldn't get through two pages without falling asleep, and I NEVER fall asleep while reading. Absolutely nothing but character development happened until the last three chapters... and
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most of the character's weren't worth that much development. Some may be a fan of his fantastic use of words to paint a picture, and while I agree it is fantastic, it is also boring.
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LibraryThing member TadAD
Another atmospheric read for the Halloween Group Read but this one evoked some mixed feelings. I was expecting the slow, deliberate pace of 19th century fiction, and certainly got it. It required a willingness to be patient with the unhurried exposition of characters and the frequent pauses for
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admonitory reflection, plus an acceptance of the fact that there aren't going to be any electrifying moments. I wasn't in any hurry and was able to relax and enjoy the trip.

What I didn't enjoy was the ending. After 290 pages of this slow trip, we get a sudden and very pat ending for our characters in about 50 pages. Yet, even at that, very little of the story's completion came as part of the plot through the offices of the characters. Instead, the narrator interjects himself for half of it to give us an "oh, by the way" explanation, clarifying what has happened. I was rather disappointed by all this.

In the end, I'm glad I read it, enjoyed it, and would mildly recommend it. If you don't look for modern pacing or excitement, it can be quite pleasant...like floating along on a slow-moving stream with a nice view.
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LibraryThing member whomoi
I feel kind of silly reviewing a literary classic. Obviously, it's a great book. If you're looking for a description, it's a comic/tragic cautionary tale about how wealth corrupts even the most innocent and noble. Personally, I think it should be required reading for every single person in the
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world.
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LibraryThing member marukosu
This story is about a poor woman and her cousin. I think this story is a little difficult. But I like this book. 
LibraryThing member gwendolyndawson
The Pyncheons are an old, old family that is cursed by sins of past generations. Three of the remaining members of the family (2 of which are haunted by the past) live in the old family mansion. A fourth is a prominent judge with a deep secret to hide. The prose is dense and melodic and often
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dramatic--typical of Hawthorne (who self-styles this book a Romance). The book loses a few points for a certain lack of subtlety and a too-neat ending.
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LibraryThing member juliabeth
The usual Hawthorne makes for some long sentences, but not necessarily unwieldy; it just takes a little more concentration than some. I enjoyed very much this story of an old house and the family that lives in (and through) it. It reminded me a little of Poe's Fall of the House of Usher. An
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enjoyable read, but just note that it's from an earlier era when we had longer attention spans.
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LibraryThing member bzedan
Though Gothic in style, the comparative lightness of this book's themes (as opposed to The Scarlet Letter) allows the full wryness of Hawthorne to blossom. God, especially in the descriptions of Hepzibah. Don't get me wrong, there is full creepiness at some points, but it's light hearted in a way,
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as terrible things happen to the Pyncheons because they're Pyncheons, though they feel that that particular attribute—being Pyncheons—should be protecting them from such degradation and horror.
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LibraryThing member chblondie97
I really like charles dickens books that he writes!!
LibraryThing member Clif
The House of the Seven Gables begins with a preface by the author that identifies the work as a romance, not a novel. That may be the author's preference, but I think most romance fans will be disappointed if they read this book. The book is a classic by a famous American author, so it deserves to
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be read. Once you finish the book and look over the complete plot, you can see how romantic love has healed a 200-year family curse. Therefore, in that regard it is a romance. However, the experience of reading the book is more like wondering through a dreary haunted labyrinth. I did not find it enjoyable to read.

I suppose the book can be considered a parable with a message aimed at the stiff necked 19th Century New England descendants of the Puritans. They are a people who behave in proper ways, but have an ancestral history of executing their neighbors on trumped up charges of witchcraft. They are haunted by a secret guilt of association because of the actions of their ancestors. The story told by this book is about the Pyncheon family that parallels this New England story at large.

The book's narrative comes as close as possible to being a ghost story while still remaining within the world of realism. I can imagine that a reader who believes in ghosts can come away from this story with the impression that it is indeed about ghosts. Likewise, another reader who doesn't believe in ghosts will say the story is about people who suspect that there may be ghosts in their lives who are intent on mischief. Either way Nathaniel Hawthorne skillfully weaves a family story filled with angst.

One feature of the book that surprised me was the role of Mesmerism (today we call it hypnotism). As described in this book it appears to be occult magic. Likewise, a lot of the melancholia described in this book would today be called clinical depression. Thank goodness for the character of Phoebe in the story. Her young sunny disposition is a breath of fresh air into an otherwise dreary environment. She’s a reminder of the eternal possibility of renewal brought by young people to human society.

Read in November, 2008
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LibraryThing member mccin68
I was intrigued by the back cover and the promise of a ghost story and came away fustrated and disappointed. a great, creepy set-up in the early passages but the endless pages of minute descriptions were repetitious and interrupted the flow of the story. the supernatural elements appeared to be
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after thoughts crammed into the story rather than driving it.
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LibraryThing member MusicMom41
What can I say? I thought this book was a great Gothic novel that was very apposite for a Halloween read. One thing that contributed to this being a wonderful reading experience for me is now that I’m finished with the 999 challenge I really treasured the leisurely pace of the story and the long,
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lush sentences. I loved the way the characters were revealed bit by bit, often with little homilies on their quirks. For those who are looking for a fast paced thriller with twists and turns in the plot this is not the book to choose. If you enjoy stories that are built on atmosphere and character with some philosophy thrown in for good measure I recommend this as a fine example of that type of novel. I also have to admit, that sometimes I suspected that Hawthorn was writing with a little “tongue in cheek” attitude toward the reader and having a sly laugh on us—or perhaps inviting us to laugh with him.
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Language

Original publication date

1851

Physical description

288 p.

ISBN

0451003039 / 9780451003034

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