"the retrospect of all the dangers and misfortunes they had each encountered"

That sad feeling when you've finished the book.

I spent all day reading, to the point where all I've had to eat is an ENTIRE BOX of girl scout cookies and some popcorn. I know who lives, who dies, who gets married, and who is whose child. I know that the heroine fainted 14 times throughout the novel (and that half). I know what is behind the black veil. I enjoyed this book so so much.

Sorry, Pooh, we can't. We have more books to read.

And I'll leave you with the last line of the book, because it is awesome.
"And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain it--the effort, however humble, has not been in vain, nor is the writer unrewarded."

THE END

"where her last interview with Valencourt, before her departure from Tholouse, had taken place"

Which is interesting because on exactly another spot they said goodbye too. She's back at her late aunt's mansion and is mooning around thinking of Valencourt.

The book has gotten really exciting in volume 4 and I'm reading as fast as I can and then we come to full stop as she wanders gardens and weeps over the many places she saw him. I just want to yell, 'Shut up and get back to the cool shit!' Like where Ludovico disappeared to when he spent the night in the haunted chamber! Or what sainted St. Aubert had to do with the mysteriously dead marchioness! Or wtf is up with the crazy nun! Pleeeeeeeeease!

"the Chevalier's extravagance has brought him twice into the prisons of Paris"

OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD! OHMYGOD!

Fainting fit 11, but that isn't why I'm saying ohmygod. Something happened that I never expected.

While Emily was fighting for her life, trapped in torture chambers, kidnapped, and held prisoner, and making a daring escape, Valencourt has been gambling away all his money, womanizing, and getting himself arrested!

I never saw this coming. Never, never, never.

"the dread of superior beauty urged her to prolong Blanche's seclusion"

Alas! I've had an upcropping of real life to distract me from adventures. It isn't done yet! Tomorrow I score a 5k road race for a charity. Runners are so persnickety about their times and personal bests and all that and they wouldn't appreciate that I was reading rather than keeping track of their times.

So we've left Emily mid-escape (I know!!!! WTF?) and we still don't know what is behind the black curtain that terrified her so much.

I don't know what happened, where Emily is, or if she got away, because suddenly we are back in France at the chateau that creeped the locals out where the sainted St. Aubert (who should never work in child placement services) died. This place.

There we meet the new owner's family. He is a count. His daughter is named Blanche.
Blanche is a beautiful young woman who loves nature.

She has lived a secluded life (in a convent put there because her stepmother was jealous of her beauty) and is therefore all goodness and light and such.

And she has a vain and stupid woman (her stepmother) who doesn't like her and takes every chance to make her miserable.

Oh and Blanche writes poetry, so we get treated to stanza on stanza about a butterfly.

Wait a minute.... All this sounds really familiar. Like a variation of another character in the story...

Not sure where Emily and her little band of escapees fit in yet. Hope she is okay. And at least while running, she can't stop to write poetry!... I hope. Maybe lack of poetry opportunities is why Radcliffe put Blanche in.

"the successful villainy of Montoni"

He made her sign away her property!!! Oh no!!

Montoni promised if she signed she could leave the castle. Of course he lied and keeps her a prisoner. Not surprising since he promised her to one of the bandits to settle his gambling debts.

Fainting fit count: 10

"(*See the Abbe Berthelon on Electricity. [A.R.])"

That is a footnote. A freaking footnote! On science!

In the story there have been some things that look like flames on the weapons of the guards and bandits that everyone thinks this is an Omen of Death.

So right now Emily is being dragged through the woods in a lightning storm by two murderers and the pike of one starts with the blue flame thing. One murderer and Emily freak out about the omen and the other guy says he's not superstitious and that the seeming blue flame actually has to do with the storm and the lightning and the metal of the weapon. Which Radcliffe then backs up with said footnote!*

Which is so amazingly awesome to me that I had to tell. Never expected this. Wow.

Okay. Enough. I need to get back to reading because there are storms and murderers dragging Emily away from the castle and any help and darkness coming on fast.

*See title of post

"It was the devil, and this is not the first time I have seen him!"

The guards on duty at night now have a tendency to fall senseless as well now, usually in droves. Emily, however, has managed to keep her feet on seeing the dark stranger who glides rather than steps and plays eerie music. She thinks it might be Valencourt and that he is now a prisoner. The guards think it the devil. They are all wrong. It's this guy.

And I really need to sleep. My usual habit of reading before bed is becoming a problem when the book is good.

"was the corpse of a man..."

.....that Emily mistook to be her aunt.

Yeah. Somehow young man and middle-aged woman are easy to mix up. (Didn't the clothing give it away?)

Ghosts, vampires, convenient inheritances, all these I can suspend disbelief for. But a heroine who can't figure out male from female?!

"crimsoned with human blood..."

Emily has been trapped in a torture chamber with a bloody corpse (we don't know whose), Annette is somewhere unknown and can't help, and the Aunt (who I quite forgive now) is either a prisoner or dead! And I stayed up until 3:30 reading it. Very tired now.

Oh, and I almost forgot to add Fainting Fit Count is now up to 8! And that half. Also the Count has fainted (a man! equal opportunity fainting! Though he had just been nearly fatally stabbed, so I'll give him that.) And the lady's maid, Annette, fainted--out of fear like a proper girl.

"a thin dusky vapour, that rose from the valley...and kindled into a crimson tint"

We have reached Udolpho at last.

And I'm still up at 1:45 in the morning. Why am I up at 1:45 in the morning?

The Aunt! Montoni! Count Morano! Ugh!

It has been a few days since I wrote last and I have done so much reading since then.

Sainted St. Aubert finally died after doing a lot of obnoxious death bed lecturing to Emily. We finally meet the Aunt and Ohmygod is she horrible! I was really glad to see her get a comeuppance when Valencourt shows up at that party.

Montoni is a complete rat bastard. I am at the part where they are leaving Venice to see M. Quesnel and wife (the other horrible aunt and uncle) and they talk in the boat. I got so angry I wanted to throw things!


I would be far more feverishly angry at the treatment of Emily if I liked her just a little more. She keeps writing that God-Awful Poetry and falling into tears every page until I am provoked beyond measure.


I feel I might start taking up with the Aunt as to censuring the constant depression of the girl. The Aunt might be evil, but she's not wholly wrong.

Also Fainting fit count is now at 5.5. Why the .5? Because one is supposedly technically not fainting. She "sunk almost lifeless on his bosom," which does say faint to me, but then it says she sighed "now and then [that] proved she had not fainted." Yeah. Sure. She still needs carried by Valencourt and eventually she "recovered her consciousness." Sounds like fainting to me, how about you?

"I would not pass one night in the chateau, for the value of the whole domain."

So says La Voisin, the peasant who has taken in a dying and weary St. Aubert. By chance it turns out La Voisin and St. Aubert share an acquaintance. A marchioness who lived in the chateau, was a "most beautiful and excellent lady," and "deserved a better fate." And there is mysterious music that has played after midnight for the past 18 years... is it related to the mysterious player Emily heard back at her own home?Yes, I am getting hooked.

I would also say that, as a firm lover of nature myself, and as someone who has traveled far in order to see wonderfully sublime prospects, I have yet to have the raptures over those prospects that seem to befall St. Aubert, Emily, and Valencourt at every other turning of the road. Maybe it is because I have yet to see the Pyrenees.

The Hero Is Shot! ......and the Heroine Faints

Believe me when I tell you, Dear Reader, I spoil nothing when I tell you this, though it is more funny than horrid.  Valencourt is shot (I won't tell you the whys and what-fors of that occurrence) and M. St. Aubert is frantically trying to stop the bleeding. There is no one else about so he calls to Emily for assistance only to find that she has "sunk on the seat in a fainting fit." How useful of her!

St. Aubert, now even more frantic, leaves poor Valencourt to help his helpless, dainty daughter. Then "the subject of his alarm changed again" as Valencourt, still bleeding, has run up to help Emily and thereby made himself worse! So St. Aubert is running between the injured man and the unconscious woman so that "he scarcely knew what he did."


Fainting Fit Count: 1

"A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and vice."

So says M. St. Aubert.

I like that line. Alas! I haven't gotten much further than that yet. Yesterday was the last day of tax season and I met myself coming and going. So far, it's a slow start, with a little tension.
Who is mysteriously playing Emily's lute and writing sonnets to her on the walls?
Why will Madame St. Aubert never walk those hills again?
How many times can Radcliffe use the word 'gloom' in one chapter?

M. St. Aubert and family are so good and virtuous I want to smack them, and clearly the aunt and uncle are frivolous, stupid, and maybe even evil, so we know there will be trouble.

So I will read on to find out why, "Alas! Madame St. Aubert knew not that she left [those hills] forever." But right now the story is kind of moving like this:

Mysteries of the Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe-- Starting Today!

Mysteries of the Udolpho is a roller coaster tale of poor, orphaned Emily St. Aubert who is sent to live with her aunt after her father's tragic death. Her aunt is married to an evil count (of course!), named Montoni, who is bent upon stealing Emily's inheritance and forcing her to marry his pawn, Count Morano, against her will. Alas! She is in love with another, a virtuous and handsome young man named Valancourt, from whom she is ripped away and held prisoner in the Castle of Udolpho. Castles, deaths, inheritances, abductions, imprisonments, ghosts, and escapes, it is by all accounts a heart-pounding, unput-downable read, with a slow start that heightens into a frenzy of suspense and excitement.

It is also quite long, though many (if you read comments on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Goodreads) have said that they were so mesmerized they could not put it down and finished it within days. Hope it lives up to the centuries of hype it has garnered. We'll see. Enjoy!!

You can find Mysteries of the Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe:

For Kindle-- Free!-- Here!
For Kindle as part of the Northanger Abbey Horrid Novel Collection-- $0.99-- Here!
For Nook-- $0.99-- Here!
On Project Gutenberg-- Free!-- Here!
On YorkU.ca-- Free!-- Here!
On Classicly-- Free!-- Here!

Next book on my list

Well, Dear Reader, did you guess?

Of course you did! (Though, because after a few days of blogging I surmise I have no dear readers who have been waiting and guessing the answer, I feel sure that you have come later, are reading this post prior to the earlier post, and are guessing at the question rather than the answer. Well, guess away and we'll call this my version of Gothic Jeopardy.) Where else to begin but where Catherine herself began! The Mysteries of Udolpho by Mrs. Ann Radcliffe!

I wish to start straight away, but, alas! I have no time to do so and therefore am beginning on the 15th of April when tax season ends. And though our hero and Catherine's love, Henry Tilney, declared that he read the work from end to end in a matter of 2 days, I believe, Dear Reader, I do not have the leisure of a gentleman. So as much as I might be engrossed and wish to think of nothing but Udolpho until I have have read every last word, I must go a bit slower than Mr. Tilney. Though if it really is so exciting...

I shall be reporting my progress and every shudder and shock as I read right here, and gossip about the characters. I shall, however, attempt to discuss no true spoilers, and only give such hints as to parts to titillate you, but not destroy your own nerve wracking pace in the book if you decide to read it sometime.

If you have no copy of your own already in your library, then I have a few suggestions as where to find it.

First off, it is available for free on Kindle if you look here.

It is also available for $0.99 as part of the Complete Horrid Novel Collection, also for Kindle, available here. I think this of good value, since it has all 9 of the novels I intend to be reading for much of the next year, and therefore gives you all the works at your immediate disposal.

If instead of a Kindle you have a Nook, do not despair. Though I cannot find the free edition, nor the Complete Horrid Novel Collection, there is a copy of Mysteries of the Udolpho available for $0.99 (still a paltry sum) available here.

If you have neither of such devises, you may still read it on your computer by accessing either pdf or html files at Project Gutenberg, YorkU.ca, and Classicly.com. All of these resources are free.

If you wish to find hard copy, I always recommend the local library or you may attempt to find it at the bookstore or website of your choosing.

Oh my god! I am so excited to begin! Until anon, Dear Reader, all of my most sincere love!