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Christabel
In this novel-length adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s classic narrative and Gothic ballad, reset to the year 1882, John Vance depicts the trials of seventeen-year-old Christabel, who, following the tragic death of her mother and her own near violation, is taken from her home in London to Twinehurst, an isolated manor house in the country. There she comes upon an alluring woman named Geraldine, who seeks refuge at the manor house. Who is this beautiful and beguiling lady? What powers does this woman possess and what dangers does she pose? With the qualities of the supernatural, the horrific, and the mysterious, the novel also comments on the plight of young women in Victorian society and emphasizes the potency and influence of literature itself.
281 pages, Paperback
Published February 22, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
April 23, 2021
A Great Gothic Novel
John Vance’s Christabel is a wonderfully dark and disturbing gothic novel, managing to be both steeped in the tradition and transcending it. Based on Coleridge’s narrative ballad of the same name, the novel sets the scene now some 80 years later (1882) in Victorian England. Through this inspired decision, Vance is able not only to update the roles of women in society but to draw on another century of great literature to serve as the novel’s foundation.
The novel opens with the attack on Christabel and her mother Anastasia, leading to her mother’s death. To escape from the horrors of the tragedy, the 17-year-old Christabel heads out of London with her father Sir Leoline to a country manor house, a place with its own lurid history. The ominous mood of the novel only heightens with appearance of the beautiful and mysterious Geraldine, whom Christabel finds on the grounds. Apparently violated, Geraldine comes to the stay and soon Christabel and to a greater extent Sir Leoline come under the thrall of this shadowy woman’s power.
The intelligence and fragile mental state of Christabel – still grieving the loss of her mother even as she seeks to forge her own identity – finds a lively articulation in the many wild visions she endures. These visions are highlights of the novel since they are startling and develop psychological depth that leaves the reader thinking about scenes long after a chapter ends.
Christabel is a remarkably accessible work of erudition. Brimming with poetic verse so well integrated into the novel that they function as the syncopated percussion section of a symphony, Christabel builds layers of meaning. While so many authors are alluded to here (everyone from Shakespeare to Austen to Bronte), the seminal presence of works like Wharton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy, Byron’s “Darkness,” and Keats’s Lamia generates both a richness in tone and some great plot twists.
Don’t me a get wrong, a reader can get great pleasure from Christabel without familiarity with any of the aforementioned writers or works. The reader’s understanding of this tale’s connections to a gothic literary past is contemporaneous with the heroine’s insights. We learn together, which makes the novel all the more intense and thrilling.
Indeed the plot unifies in the final pages in stunning ways that manage to be both surprising and inevitable. Vance’s well-drawn characters and imaginative scenes give the novel its own distinctive stamp. Yes, it reminds me of the great gothic novels of the past, everything from Lewis’s The Monk to Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho to Bronte’s Weathering Heights. But its 21st Century sensibility of a woman’s plight in an environment of domineering and often wicked men gives Christabel an awareness of its own time even as it cascades through the centuries preceding. Vance has pulled off quite a feat here.
John Vance’s Christabel is a wonderfully dark and disturbing gothic novel, managing to be both steeped in the tradition and transcending it. Based on Coleridge’s narrative ballad of the same name, the novel sets the scene now some 80 years later (1882) in Victorian England. Through this inspired decision, Vance is able not only to update the roles of women in society but to draw on another century of great literature to serve as the novel’s foundation.
The novel opens with the attack on Christabel and her mother Anastasia, leading to her mother’s death. To escape from the horrors of the tragedy, the 17-year-old Christabel heads out of London with her father Sir Leoline to a country manor house, a place with its own lurid history. The ominous mood of the novel only heightens with appearance of the beautiful and mysterious Geraldine, whom Christabel finds on the grounds. Apparently violated, Geraldine comes to the stay and soon Christabel and to a greater extent Sir Leoline come under the thrall of this shadowy woman’s power.
The intelligence and fragile mental state of Christabel – still grieving the loss of her mother even as she seeks to forge her own identity – finds a lively articulation in the many wild visions she endures. These visions are highlights of the novel since they are startling and develop psychological depth that leaves the reader thinking about scenes long after a chapter ends.
Christabel is a remarkably accessible work of erudition. Brimming with poetic verse so well integrated into the novel that they function as the syncopated percussion section of a symphony, Christabel builds layers of meaning. While so many authors are alluded to here (everyone from Shakespeare to Austen to Bronte), the seminal presence of works like Wharton’s The Pleasures of Melancholy, Byron’s “Darkness,” and Keats’s Lamia generates both a richness in tone and some great plot twists.
Don’t me a get wrong, a reader can get great pleasure from Christabel without familiarity with any of the aforementioned writers or works. The reader’s understanding of this tale’s connections to a gothic literary past is contemporaneous with the heroine’s insights. We learn together, which makes the novel all the more intense and thrilling.
Indeed the plot unifies in the final pages in stunning ways that manage to be both surprising and inevitable. Vance’s well-drawn characters and imaginative scenes give the novel its own distinctive stamp. Yes, it reminds me of the great gothic novels of the past, everything from Lewis’s The Monk to Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho to Bronte’s Weathering Heights. But its 21st Century sensibility of a woman’s plight in an environment of domineering and often wicked men gives Christabel an awareness of its own time even as it cascades through the centuries preceding. Vance has pulled off quite a feat here.
August 31, 2021
Part Gothic horror, part mystery, part female-oriented focus—-an excellent reworking of the famous Coleridge poem.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews