Grasp Tales Of Mystery & The Macabre Assembled By Elizabeth Gaskell Depicted In Electronic Format
the exception of The Disappearances, the stories were well written with great atmosphere had the creeps reading in the sunlight in the garden love Elizabeth Gaskell! Jako miłośnik literatury grozy latzdecydowanie nie mogłem przejść obojętnie
obok tego tytułu.
Mam słabość do powieści grozy pisanych kobiecą dłonią tak też nie trzeba mnie
było przekonywać do tej książki,
W skład książki udostępnionej nam przez wydawnictwo CampT wchodzinowel
które są utrzymane w gotyckich, wiktoriańskich klimatach, Osobiście w moim odczuciu podczas
obcowania z recenzowanym tytułem nie odczułem efektu gęsiej skórki ani żadnych mrówek na
ciele choć to lubię najbardziej D nie mniej jednak każda z historii ma coś do opowiedzenia.
Styl pani Gaskell jest subtelny, delikatny i spokojny mógłbym powiedzieć że sama autorka
towarzyszyła mi podczas wędrówki z kartki na kartkę trzymając za rękę niejako ubezpieczając i
chroniąc od złego któremu sama nadała formętak obrazowo to odebrałem.
To takie łagodne
opowieści grozy które nie rzucają nas na głęboką wodę tylko stopniowo wprowadzają czytelnika
krok po kroku coraz to głębiej w fabułę.
Niestety nie podobały mi się zakończenia większości nowel,
Elizabeth Gaskell pokazuje że potrafi podnosić napięcie i radzi sobie z tym bardzo dobrze problem w tym że spodziewałem się jak by to powiedzieć bardziej "spektakularnych" zakończeń.
Takich
zakończeń z "przytupem" jak robiła to Mary E Wilkins Freemanuściślając jak do tej pory moja
autorka nrold schoolowej powieści grozy.
Kończąc powiem że książkę czyta się płynnie i wygodnie, Jestem zadowolony że posiadam ten tytuł
w swojej kolekcji, Zaryzykował bym stwierdzenie że autorka romansowała wręcz ze swoim
dziełem podczas spisywania kolejnych stron,
This book was dreadful and dull, The stories lack any development and real characters, It's filled with fluff and details that aren't important to the stories, It was a chore to try and read this book, I bought it on a whim at my local bookstore, but I just wasted, I read another book inbetween this one and then just skipped around the stories to see if there was any redeemable tale in this book.
I understand that this was written in the Victorian Era, it shows so much the prejudice that this Era had towards independent and/or grieving women.
That's the only interesting aspect was how the author depicted all the good women as the good little submissive church ladies they should behave as versus women who have doubts or troubles.
This author definitely believed in these aspects of women in her time, Charles Dickens was a great encourager of Elizabeth Gaskell, and all but two of the nine stories in this recentcollection appeared first in Dickens periodicals.
All nine are firstrate, by an author much more known for writing a number of classic and beloved Cnovels notably “Mary Barton” “North and South” and “Cranford”.
It's a coherent collection in that all the stories do either deal in mystery or the macabre, Only three, however, involve the supernatural, One of these, “The Old Nurses Story” probably the most famous piece here and often anthologised, features an actual ghost, It's a textbook Victorian ghost story, perfect in conception and execution, The other two, also very effective, involve a curse,
Of the remainder,
the theme of two of the stories is deception by members of the upper class, Underneath their civilised veneer, these men are ruthless monsters, dealing in robbery and murder, The story in which this deception is practiced on, among others, an unwitting wife, is particularly brilliant an exhilarating and chilling chase story,
Another story tells of a nogood son who repays the loving devotion of his parents with ingratitude and criminal cruelty and finally, one is a historical piece about thewitch trials in Salem, Massachusetts.
In my view, this latter story is the best one here, Running to nearlypages, “Lois the Witch” almost qualifies as a novella, It's tale of the tragedy that overtakes one young and innocent girl, among many others unjustly accused of witchcraft, is genuinely heartbreaking all the more so because it's based on fact.
In this story I saw disturbing parallels with the modern culture of 'witchhunting' so wellfacilitated by social media, fuelled by virtuesignalling, the need to selfaggrandise, and fear.
Sadly, humans never change.
Of two lesser pieces here, one describes a vivid and whimsical dream that we're not sure is a dream until we reach the end and the other isn't a story at all, but a series of anecdotes about people who have mysteriously disappeared over the years a piece probably influenced by the disappearance of Gaskell's own brother at sea on his way to India.
The quality in this collection surprised me, Something of the social consciousness of Gaskell's novels comes across here, but in a different form, I hadn't known Gaskell for a writer of this kind and it was something of a revelation to me that she was able to do it so well.
I didn't enjoy all of the short stories in this collection, but it was a solid collection, I can't lie, this was SO HARD to get through, But some stories were really worth it, some other stories not so much, The book has a great cover but some of the stories are quite poor plotlines meander out of control in several and one even turns out to be all a dream.
Rising literacy in Victorian times evidently created a huge market for short stories and quality wasn't an issue,
The collection is worth reading for the range of settings and characters, It would have been improved though with the inclusion of A Dark night's work, one of Gaskell's better works, I expected more since I based the fact that Elizabeth Gaskell is my favourite gothic writer on my love for her short story, The Old Nurse's Story which I studied it back at university in short story class.
Two or three years later as I read Gaskell's gothic short stories, The Old Nurse's Story remains my favourite, Most featured short stories don't have a clear moral message with the exception of this one,
Gaskell is a great classical writer but I don't think I could read this book again any time soon, Najbardziej przypadły mi do gustu Szara Dama i Uboga klaryska, Reszta w mniejszym bądź większym stopniu była okey, bądź rozczarowująca jak Opowieść dziedzica, Mam wrażenie, że Gaskell sprawdza się o wiele lepiej w dłuższych niż, krótszych opowiadaniach, dlatego też z chęcią sięgnę po jej powieści.
Opowieść starej piastunki/
Opowieść dziedzica/
Biedna klaryska,/
Klątwa rodu Griffithsów,/
Szara dama/Maybe it's just that we live in a world where there's at least one serial killer on TV at any given point, fictional or otherwise, but the mystery and macabre in this book isn't at all mysterious or macabre.
It seems that the scariest thing in Elizabeth Gaskell's world was a highwayman, There were several of those featured in the short stories, Or perhaps I just don't particularly like short stories of any kind, This collection hasn't exactly changed my mind about them,
I read Wives and Daughters and quite enjoyed it, so perhaps from now on, I'll stick to Gaskell's social commentaries, The Old Nurse's Story
The Squire's Story
The Poor Clare
Lois the Witch
The Doom of the Griffiths
The Ghost in the Garden Room
The Grey Woman
Curious, if True
DisappearancesAlthough in general the stories are interesting, and retain a little of suspence, especially "Poor Clare" and "Lois, the Witch", the building up of the stories takes too long and it loses some of its way.
Too many times the climax of the story is just plain boring or uneventful, particularly in "The Grey Lady", Overall an agreeable book, but do not foresee rereading it ever, I went into this book hoping for a really good gothic read and I won't necessarily say that I was disappointed, It had all the elements of a gothic fiction, The stories however were a little less 'thriling' than they could have been, My topfrom this anthology are Lois, the Witch the Grey Woman and the Doom of the Griffiths, The setting for most of these stories is dark, mysterious and maybe sometimes gloomy which I really enjoyed, I also liked that Gaskell wrote about times that were way before her and managed to capture the tones of those times, Some of the characters from the stories were dramatic and I really liked that kind of one of the main reasons I like readingth century gothic novels.
Overall, it's a good read if you're looking for a gothic anthology to pass your time and not really get too invested in, So unfortunately this was a pretty big disappointment for me, For whatever reason none of the stories felt special or interesting to me, Certainly my least favorite Elizabeth Gaskell book, Not awful but pretty boring, .