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Because, as it turns out, I enjoy reviewing stuff... let's have one of these. Books, comics, anything that's conveyed through written words is fair game.
Here, I'll get it started:
The Haunted Woman, David Lindsay - 7/10
This was my second Lindsay novel, the first having been the better-known Voyage to Arcturus. All in all an enjoyable read, but though the core concept is both fascinating and way ahead of its time, finding echoes in the likes of Mark Z. Danielewski and Alan Moore the better part of a century later, the plot and characters it's wrapped around... could be more interesting, to put it gently.
The novel is about a young, engaged woman who lives with her rich aunt, for whom they want to find a new house so she can move out with her fiancee. They hear about an old estate belonging to an acquaintance of the latter, about which something is supposedly "off", and go visit it. As it turns out, there are legends about the place going back to Saxon times, and in fact, the protagonist discovers that there is in fact a geometrically impossible space in the house, accessible only to some people through staircases that seem to exist only some of the time.
Fantastic though this idea is, however, it's only really explored in connection to the protagonist's developing a crush on the owner of the house and vice-versa, in what I found to be a terminally uninteresting treatise in stodgy Victorian morals. Somewhat compounding this problem, most characters seem to communicate exclusively through Wildean witticisms.
Still, like I said, I found it an enjoyable read, overall; certainly better than Arcturus, which, despite some fascinating dreamlike, hallucinatory imagery, I found way too heavy on the allegory.
Here, I'll get it started:
The Haunted Woman, David Lindsay - 7/10
This was my second Lindsay novel, the first having been the better-known Voyage to Arcturus. All in all an enjoyable read, but though the core concept is both fascinating and way ahead of its time, finding echoes in the likes of Mark Z. Danielewski and Alan Moore the better part of a century later, the plot and characters it's wrapped around... could be more interesting, to put it gently.
The novel is about a young, engaged woman who lives with her rich aunt, for whom they want to find a new house so she can move out with her fiancee. They hear about an old estate belonging to an acquaintance of the latter, about which something is supposedly "off", and go visit it. As it turns out, there are legends about the place going back to Saxon times, and in fact, the protagonist discovers that there is in fact a geometrically impossible space in the house, accessible only to some people through staircases that seem to exist only some of the time.
Fantastic though this idea is, however, it's only really explored in connection to the protagonist's developing a crush on the owner of the house and vice-versa, in what I found to be a terminally uninteresting treatise in stodgy Victorian morals. Somewhat compounding this problem, most characters seem to communicate exclusively through Wildean witticisms.
Still, like I said, I found it an enjoyable read, overall; certainly better than Arcturus, which, despite some fascinating dreamlike, hallucinatory imagery, I found way too heavy on the allegory.