Status Updates From Gaston de Blondeville [Anno...

The novel - as usual - springs into life about halfway through the narrative proper, during the Fifth Day and Night (instead of Chapters, the book is broken down into Days: hilariously, either Ann or her editor lost count and there are two Third Days; I hope she's not going for a Genesis metaphor or something), with the inclusion of reliable Radcliffe tropes a) the Sinister Holy Man and b) the Tense Escape.

I think all survivors of Udolpho have an (earned) instinctive dread of Ann Radcliffe's poetry. But this 12-and-a-half page rhyming narrative - look upon it, ye Udolphiles, and tremble - is actually pretty good, I think.

That, or, you know. Stockholm Syndrome.

'O'er the lone mountains riding, / From a distant land he came, / No step his dark step guiding; / But he thought he saw a flame, / That bright, or dim, would sport awhile; / Then vanish, as in very guile; / He heard, as he passed, the witch-name sound; / And his startled steed, at a single bound, / Bore him away from that evil ground.'

Okay, Ann: I get that you're trying something new with this cod-medieval prose business, and I respect it. But if you don't tone it down a bit with the archaicisms ('ychon'!) and the abbreviated wording (try saying 'embroidered' instead of ''broidered'; 'behaviour' instead of ''haviour'; you know the stuff) you're going to lose me. And then, trust me, this Boke of yon is headed verily down ye privie.