Helpful Score: 1
A very interesting, but little known, novel. It was scandalous during its original publication, but now its just an interesting story about love & people's inner motivations.
Helpful Score: 1
Dark, creepy, intense, disgusting...I like. If you want a classic read with adultery, murder, and corpses, try this one. Two desperate, adulterous individuals murder the one person that stands between them. Instead of finding happiness, the couple is haunted by insane terror. The book reads like a ghost story, although by 19th century standards it was labeled a "psychological study." Also, considering that it was written in the 1860's, it is rather explicit and graphic in some places. One thing that annoyed me was that, due to the translation, some words are repeated over and over (because many French words have only one English equivalent). Also, sometimes the changing tenses are hard to follow, as is the chronology of the flashbacks. Nevertheless, I agree with the blurb on the back cover: "This book has lost none of its power to shock!"
