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I dove into Carol Goodman's debut novel Lake of Dead Languages years ago. Compelling, mysterious, a deep, psychological tale of teachers and students at a girl's prep school in the Adirondack Mountains. Although I never hesitated in seeing the book through to the last page, I was disappointed by the ending; in particular, the dark creepiness of the morally frail and faulty adults revealed by the conclusion. I have a bias: I like my dark, creepy tales to have just a bit of hope and redemption at the end. But I still recommend it--Carol Goodman's Lake of Dead Languages is definitely a modern Gothic novel, if you need one for your Gothic Challenge as hosted by Bibliophilic Book Blog.
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And Publishers' Weekly has deemed Goodman's newly published Arcadia Falls, a gothic novel. And guess what? As I write this, it is being shipped to my library. So I am going to be finally reading a gothic novel for the Challenge I've taken on.
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I'm also considering rereading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the Gothic Challenge. If you haven't read it, read it and don't be put off by the title and all the 20th-century silliness that transformed Frankenstein into a ridiculous creature Shelley would never have recognized.
I first read Shelley's novel as a scared-stiff, last-semester-of-college senior and I didn't know when I'd read anything better. The class, The English Novel, taught by the wonderful Miss Jane Corsa, mesmermized me and saved my life that semester. I couldn't bear being thrust into the wide world after graduation. My escape for those last few precious months was the English novel--an enlightened re-reading of Jane Eyre, discovering Middlemarch, The Mill on the Floss, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and on it went! Thank you, Miss Corsa!
Judith, I read and reviewed this for the first time earlier in the year. I really enjoyed it as it was completely different from what I had expected.
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