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Bezig met laden... Gothic tales (origineel 2000; editie 2000)door Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
Informatie over het werkGothic Tales door Elizabeth Gaskell (2000)
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. The Old Nurse's Story, about a beautiful ghost child intent on luring a warm-blooded child into the freezing nights on the moors; The Squire's Story, about a gentleman with a nebulous past who moves into a grand house and marries a local belle only to reveal a sordid secret; The Poor Clare about an old woman who casts a spell which results in a lovely young woman being followed by her evil and seductive double; Lois the Witch, a terrifying and heartbreaking reprise of the Salem witch trials... out of nine stories in all, seven of them held me captive in this collection, which is quite an excellent average in any short story collection. I've read some of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels and been highly impressed with her social commentary and vivid portrayals of class conflicts, but here we see an altogether different side of Gaskell's writing, which is the one she felt more free to show with an assumed name, under the cover of anonymity. No longer constricted by propriety, she was able to show a world operating beneath that thin veneer that Victorian morals dictated and through the looking glass: curses which held their sway over many generations, women with witchy powers, or who were assumed to be witches because of their barely hidden sexuality, men who wreaked true evil and cruelty and death by overreaching their powers in a paternalistic society, and yet, also and always, a woman's love and nurturing as her strongest defence against many of those evils. Two sides then to Elizabeth Gaskell. Two sides very much worth discovering. I predict there will be more E.G. in my reading future, and that I will return to some of my favourites in this story collection too. These are quite different from modern horror tales. Some have supernatural elements such as curses, ghosts and doppelgangers. Others are more an exploration of the twisted side of human nature-- a son gone bad, the twisted frenzy of the Salem witch trials. I found them enjoyable--they won't keep you up at night, but will give you a bit to ponder. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de uitgeversreeks(en)Bevat
Elizabeth Gaskell's chilling Gothic tales blend the real and the supernatural to eerie, compelling effect. 'Disappearances', inspired by local legends of mysterious vanishings, mixes gossip and fact; 'Lois the Witch', a novella based on an account of the Salem witch hunts, shows how sexual desire and jealousy lead to hysteria; while in 'The Old Nurse's Story' a mysterious child roams the freezing Northumberland moors. Whether darkly surreal, such as 'The Poor Clare', where an evil doppelgänger is formed by a woman's bitter curse, or mischievous like 'Curious, if True', a playful reworking of fairy tales, all the stories in this volume form a stark contrast to the social realism of Gaskell's novels, revealing a darker and more unsettling style of writing. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)823.8Literature English English fiction Victorian period 1837-1900LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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The introduction was really long and I skipped over it. These were the stories that I finished and read.
"Disappearances" (3 stars)-It starts off listing random disappearances of men in the area. And I thought there would be a big pay off in the end. Instead it just came to an abrupt end.
"The Old Nurse's Story (4 stars)-I thought it was interesting reading about how an old woman did what she could at a younger age to keep her young charge safe from phantoms that haunted the grounds. The backstory to these phantoms was interesting and I still wonder though at the new lord of the house who didn't seem put out by the hauntings.
"The Poor Clare" (1 star)- I did not understand this one at all. I finally just gave up after re-reading it through twice.
I tried to start the next story and found myself yawning and decided to just stop reading. I am annoyed I paid $9.99 for this kindle version since this is rife with typos all over that have "ibid = page XX" and whatever page number was in there. The book also had footnotes all through it, and when you would click on one it did not take you back to where you left off in the book. Every single time I hit the back arrow I would get kicked out of the book. So my frustration with the typos, the footnotes littered on every sentence just made me finally decide to throw in the white towel of surrender. ( )