Reviews for A Sicilian Romance

The average rating for A Sicilian Romance based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-08-11 00:00:00 Carol Cervantes And they say this is one of her worst books?! Ann Radcliffe was the J.K. Rowling of the late 1700s. She churned out bestsellers so popular they made her the highest paid author for an entire decade. Her atmospheric gothic mystery/romances entranced the reading public similar to how Rowling immersed us in rich worlds of wizards and magic. Critics and fans alike could not get enough of Radcliffe. And yet today she is rarely read outside of a small slice of literary academia and hardcore gothic buffs. If it weren't for Jane Austen's incessant references to her in Northanger Abbey she might have been forgotten completely. What a shame! A Sicilian Romance'allegedly her least impressive effort'is a marvelous adventure from beginning to end. Like classic fairytales, the story is a bit of a morality play where the characters are pure good or pure evil. Specifically, there's a rather nasty ruler who rampages after his daughter challenges his choice of husband for her. As the daughter flees for her life, we follow along for endless rides through gorgeous countryside, confrontations with bandits, and ghostly moaning within the recesses of haunted castles. Sounds are a particular strength to Radcliffe's writing. She uses noise to create mystery or confusion, and to induce terror in her characters. It's a clever strategy, since sound is a classic source for misinterpretation and fodder for the imagination. Acclaimed as the "Shakespeare of romance writers" there's a long history of praise for her prose in general, which is well-deserved. She's not an especially verbose writer'her language isn't meant to draw attention to itself'but her vocabulary often exceeds brilliant. It's easy, succinct reading, but not a text to breeze through because she can pack a full scope of emotion and plot development into a short sentence. Blink and you might miss a huge twist, major reveal, character motivation, or lovely turn of phrase at least. The pace is brisk. Arguably too brisk. The number of unexpected surprises and chance encounters crammed into a mere 200 pages is staggering. I am certainly interested to read her much longer works to see if she slows down any, or if the number of shocks is just exponentialized. My hypothesis for why modern readers have largely lost interest in her bibliography is probably due to her "tell" rather than "show" style. The imagery is vivid, but the style doesn't invite the reader into the experience. There's no effort to expand on how exactly a character is feeling when she says they are stupefied by sheer terror. The scenes are described using summary rather than a lived-through narration. Dialogue is a scarce rarity, but always pitch perfect when it occurs. Basically, she writes the opposite of where literary trends are today. I don't consider that a bad thing, however. By avoiding lengthy internalized dramatization, she allows space for a much longer list of surprising plot elements. Had all the scenes in this book been given Stephen King-like levels of description, it would be 10,000+ pages. In any case, the pleasure of reading a classic is to depart from modern times and immerse yourself in a bygone era, a different style of writing, and new realization about what are timeless conflicts. Familiar themes of jealousy, pride, obsession, fear, corruption, family and many others make up a compelling page-turner which managed to keep me on the edge of my seat just as it did for audiences who read it 230 years ago.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-10-20 00:00:00 John Wilson Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) was considered the pioneer of gothic literature. The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole came first but Radcliffe legitimized the genre by her brilliant use of the supernatural elements and thorough handling of the inexplicable phenomena that, critics said, made readers accept and love gothic works. This work, A Sicilian Romance was parodied by Jane Austen in her Northanger Abby. Radcliffe influenced not only Austen's works but also those of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and Willie Collins' The Woman in White. Since I will be reading those soon, I thought I should read this book first. And oh, obviously, this book also influenced one of my top 10 favorite novels, Wuthering Heights by Emilie Bronte. Now you are getting the idea of what this book is all about. It's "romance," among others, in the dark. The dark here has implied ghosts and spirits. The setting is an old castle, the house of Manzinni, whose stoned walls have many, many secrets. This is similar to the castle of Otranto in Walpole's novel that came out the year Radcliffe was born. The writing is poetic, luminous and descriptive. Radcliffe took her time in explaining the landscapes and the feelings of her characters. In the forefront were the sisters, Emilia and Julia. They are similar to Jane Austen's Elinor (reserved, quiet, prudent) and Marianne (outgoing, alive, frank) in her 1811 book, Sense and Sensibility. However, the comparison ends there. Just like A. S. Byatt's Possession: A Romance, that word is also misleading readers here. This book is far from romance in the current definition of it. It is full of intrigue, suspense, tyranny, and drama. The main villain of the novel is Ferdinand, the fifth marquis of Mazzini, who is so ruthless for a husband that, for him to get another wife, has to imprison his first wife, Louisa in the southern wing of the castle and declare her dead. Louisa is not Emilia and Julia's mother, as they are among the children of the marquis and his second wife, Maria. What happens next is too much of a spoiler but I can tell you that there are many interesting characters - heroes and villains - that you will truly empathize with or hate to the core of your bones. The use of the frame story is very effective. The story is told by a tourist who becomes intrigued by the tales of a monk he meets in the ruins of the doomed castle. You'll have the feeling of walking inside a European old castle and you wonder what's the history behind the place and then suddenly an old monk appears and tells you what happened in that place, many, many years ago. There is not too many information about Ann Radcliffe in the internet. Critics noted that she was aloof and elusive at the height of her fame. This reminded me of J. D. Salinger and Thomas Pynchon. What is it with these good writers that they hide when they are already famous? We also have Bob Ong here in the Philippines whose works are selling like hotcakes but he is neither granting interviews and public appearances nor, more importantly, making his true identity known. Oh, maybe that's one of the perks of being brilliant. Or they are busy writing their next masterpieces. They don't want other writers to know about them as they are afraid of being copied. But for sure, they would be happy and proud to having influenced next generations of writers much like in the case of Ann Radcliffe and the likes of Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Emilie Bronte, A. S. Byatt, etc.