soph (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sophia_sol) wrote2015-04-06 09:50 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2015-04-06 09:50 pm
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy
The thing about The Scarlet Pimpernel is that it's a good book almost despite itself.
The writing is just so TEDIOUS. I mean I knew that already? But it's amazing how much difference it makes when listening to a book as an audiobook. You can't skim AT ALL; it's the worst.
The writing is repetitive, replete with cliches, melodramatic, and silly. The book goes through five chapters before introducing any of its main characters, and then proceeds to spend as little time as possible on its titular hero. Although Marguerite is apparently the cleverest woman in Europe, she hardly ever gets a chance to show it. And if I never hear the word "inane" or "merry" again it will be too soon, because Orczy falls back on those words way too often when it comes to describing Percy and Marguerite's public selves.
Also of course there's the horrible antisemitic caricature, and the hilariously biased perspective on the French Revolution. And the classism. And the reductive/essentialist understanding of gender. And it somehow manages to be anti-French even as one of its main characters is French.
And yet DESPITE ALL OF THE ABOVE I can't help liking the book, idek. I guess the long and the short of it is that I'm really into identity porn and troll heroes and melodrama, what can I say.
The writing is just so TEDIOUS. I mean I knew that already? But it's amazing how much difference it makes when listening to a book as an audiobook. You can't skim AT ALL; it's the worst.
The writing is repetitive, replete with cliches, melodramatic, and silly. The book goes through five chapters before introducing any of its main characters, and then proceeds to spend as little time as possible on its titular hero. Although Marguerite is apparently the cleverest woman in Europe, she hardly ever gets a chance to show it. And if I never hear the word "inane" or "merry" again it will be too soon, because Orczy falls back on those words way too often when it comes to describing Percy and Marguerite's public selves.
Also of course there's the horrible antisemitic caricature, and the hilariously biased perspective on the French Revolution. And the classism. And the reductive/essentialist understanding of gender. And it somehow manages to be anti-French even as one of its main characters is French.
And yet DESPITE ALL OF THE ABOVE I can't help liking the book, idek. I guess the long and the short of it is that I'm really into identity porn and troll heroes and melodrama, what can I say.