Picked up as part of a Freecycle stash - mostly becasue it is one of the 1001 books to read before you die, but also because I've heard Radcliffe influenced Jane Austen (most particularly in 'Northanger Abbey')

This is one big fat book! In some ways this reminded me a lot of Moby Dick - not the most flattering comparison, if you read what I wrote about that (http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/3947370). However, I don't feel anywhere near the dread I had for Moby. I think the main way it reminded me of Moby was the denseness of the text. Possibly I mean this literally on the page - there's a lot crammed on each page. But also the words are very dense too. In the case of 'Moby' it sent me to sleep every few pages. I didn't have this problem with 'Udolpho', but I did skim a lot of the text to stop from getting bogged down. I'd be interested in checking if Herman Melville also used a lot of commas, as this is something that stood out in Radcliffe's text - so much so that it is pointed out specifically in the foreward. They are also both similar in the fact that both story lines meander and a lot of the time I was wondering where on earth it was going.

The main problem I had with 'Udolpho' (which did not occur so much in Moby) is that a lot of the story is related in a passive voice and this failed to draw me in. There is very little dialogue to speak of at first. Instead you get sentences like 'Emily then discussed X, Z and Z with her father'. It *did* pick up after the first 200 odd pages - once Emily is actually at Udolpho - and I do think there is more dialogue after this point too. However, if I wasn't reading this as a '1001' book, I doubt I would have got that far. In terms of the suspense, the book actually does quite a good job. There a few certain incidences that are not explained until the last 30 pages or so and I did wonder if I had just missed them becasue of the skimming . I hadn't :-)

It *was* too melodramatic for me, with Emily fainting or weeping every second page. However, I appreciate that it was the first book of it's type and from this perspective I'm glad to have read it for context ot other works. I probably won't be reading it again in a hurry though!

RELEASE NOTES:

Released at my last ever (??) Kingston BC Meetup! My damning faint praise did not help it's cause, however, so it was left on the mantlepiece near the couches.

Just picked up the book. Great idea.

CAUGHT IN KINGSTON UPON THAMES SURREY UK

Looks interesting. Haven't read it yet.