This is archived from my board I read it back in ummmmmm Jan? Oh well!
I finished "The Monk" by Matthew G. Lewis today. It is one of the first gothic novels ever written. The Monk was written in 1794 and is surprisingly readable still today.
The Monk is the story of a monk, obviously, named Ambrosio. Ambrosio is a paragon of virtue! At least in outward appearance. He was left in the Capuchin Monastery at a very young age and grew up within its walls. He is admired and worshipped all through Madrid as the most godly person on Earth. It is easy to avoid temptation when there is no temptation around to avoid.
Enter temptation ... in the form of a woman named Matilda. Ambrosio resists the temptation of a beautiful woman hiding in the monastery who swears eternal, fatal love for him. Well he resists for about 5 pages : ) Ambrosio falls and when he falls he falls HARD!
In my opinion you can't beat these old gothics for creepy. This book has it all! Sex, though not graphic, murder, incest, rape, infanticide....
Criminous monks, evil nuns, and a good massacre of innocents... not to mention a REALLY creepy scene in a nunnery burial crypt!
There are two subplots in the book that tie in with the main story. I actually was more interested in the Don Raymond and Agnes subplot far more than the Ambrosio plot but the last 7 pages chilled my blood totally! And the final image of the book was well worth the allergy attack from reading it!
The book is about pride and the mess people get into when they have too much of it. Up to the very last moment Ambrosio is only scared of death because though he knows he has done wrong he is only concerned over himself. Not because he did really horrible things ie. murder and rape, but only that HE is afraid to die in an Auto da Fe. He feels no real remorse for the trail of corpses behind him or the broken lives he has left behind, he only mourns HIS loss of Heaven.
BOOK REVIEW by KRIS