Interesting and confusing at the same time.

Interesting and confusing at the same time.

Interesting and confusing at the same time.

Interesting and confusing at the same time.

I'm not sure how long my flirtation with Edward Gorey's works is going to last. With The Other Statue and The Epiplectic Bicycle I have been mildly amused, but not captivated. His illustrations are good, but not so outstanding that they carry me away and make up for the sparse text and lack of any discernible plot. I think I can probably make the effort for one one more of his books, but if that doesn't grip me then Mr Gorey and I shall part company, but hopefully on reasonably good terms.

Update I: On a second reading, I got a little more out of the text than I did the first time around, so increased rating from 3* to 3.5*.

Update II: Here we are again. I took The Other Statue down from its shelf to compare Gorey's illustrative style with that of Todd Remick in the card game Gloom, which had struck me as being similar. I think the comparison bears out my impression that Remick is influenced by Gorey:
http://www.atlas-games.com/images/product/1250.jpg

The artwork is whimsically macabre, as is the game play. It also owes something, perhaps, to Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. It's a mordantly amusing game in which the object is to have your characters die Untimely Deaths in miserable circumstances - we're playing it this Christmas.

Anyway, as this is a book review rather than a game review, I shall return to Mr. Gorey. Third time around for this book and it's certainly grown on me - star rating now a solid 4. Now that I'm not expecting things to be explained, I can appreciate the spaces Gorey has left for the reader's own fancy to flesh out the plot, imagine motivations and build tentative theories about what may (or may not) be a reasonable narrative. It's a bit like reading a "choose-your-own-adventure" book which has most of its pages missing. There's no right of wrong answers and I've found different things in it on each reading - or perhaps I've brought different things. A fascinatingly clever collaboration between author and reader, with no doubt about which of the participants is the main creative force. I think I may be hooked. ( )