This book is 100% Ann Radcliffe. ( )

Ann Radcliffe continued the Gothic tradition through the late 1700s (launched earlier by Horace Walpole and propagated by others), but with her own twists: to rationalize the supernatural elements, and to provide her female characters with stronger will. This at least had me interested going in, even though Walpole had trained me not to expect too much, and I was impressed with Radcliffe's able capturing and insight into teenage love angst. That was the high point. There is a plot, but it is continually interfered with by melodrama and the self-sacrifice of unambiguously moral characters who felt scarcely human to this 21st century reader. Events hinge on enormous coincidence which was a standard and accepted device for its time; as with reading Dickens, you either forgive it on that basis or you can't. The final chapters were artificially prolonged to the point of my wishing she'd just wrap this up already. For all that it retains some historical value, as entertainment it's no longer much. ( )

Un romance siciliano fue la segunda novela de Radcliffe publicada en 1790. Se centra en un par de hermanas, Julia y Emilia, que viven en Sicilia. Se supone que su madre murió, y son criadas en parte por su cruel madrastra. Julia es el foco de la acción de la narración. Se enamora de Hippolitus, pero su padre, severo y dominante, quiere que se case con el Duque de Luovo. Con la ayuda de algunos criados, Julia escapa del castillo donde su familia vive con el plan de fugarse con Hippolitus. Sin embargo, su plan se frustra y se captura a Hippolitus. Julia huye de nuevo y se esconde en un confuso sistema de cavernas subterráneas. Después de mucha intriga que involucra el vuelo y la persecución, Julia termina en un ala deshabitada de la casa de su familia. Ella descubre que su madre estuvo allí todo el tiempo. El padre y la madre de Julia mueren durante las escenas climáticas finales, Julia se reúne con Hippolitus ( )

It was great in the beginning, it was great in the middle, but then somewhere in the end it just went downhill.

One too many twists and turns to keep up with. I thought for a while some of the characters were dead the up they popped again alive and well. Ummmmmmmmm wait, last I heard of you you were at the end of a sword, when did you come back to life.

Too many times did I have to figure out the scene courtesy of the author telling me that things could not be written only imagined by one who lived through it basically or some such nonsense like that. I get needing to use my own imagination and I could have easily taken that line once perhaps twice but over and over again. You are the author, tell me what you are thinking. I can easily imagine a scene's background but I don't think I should also have to imagine the main action and details. ( )

If you plan to read a book published in 1790 then you must account for the aesthetic differences between fiction then and now. And perhaps for some vocabulary differences, although I don't think there was any word here that I did not already know. (My feeling on that score is that dictionaries are good things to own.) Romance novels then were just that Romances. Not romantic, although love usually featured highly, but romance in the sense of being set in an exotic place that the reader had to visualize from the descriptive text. Ann Radcliffe was known for her Gothic influences too, so this romance has half a dozen tales of romantic love, most of them tragic, a couple of them vile, set in exotic Sicily. Ghosts. Bandits. Boat wrecks. Numerous loose ends. Par for the course for the fiction of the time. Over the top for today. ( )