He can also overload with details (often at some unusual times) yet somehow I found it often working. While not as good a writer as Dickens, Ainsworth can spin a tidy phrase and find a telling detail. The marriage scene in the underground vault being the most overdone and demented things I have ever read. People were married in caves where saints starved and whipped themselves to death. Desiccated human arms were liberally tossed about. Minor characters were struck by lightning as mood music. There was a sarcophagus with a built in booby trap. I think the Rookwoods were under seven curses. As one had jolly songs of cheating death, the other revelled in it. As Dick Turpin was the Newgate face, then Peter Bradley was the gothic. (Also, I am aware how strange it is that Ainsworth should decide that Dick Turpin of all people should be his gallant highwayman - he was more of a home invasion man at any rate). There really is no need for him or the canting crew like the Knight of Malta - but that’s what makes it so fun, the gothic plot is already overloaded with high-blown ridiculousness, let’s have an earthy hero gallop in to mix stuff up. His owning of a marriage certificate becomes null and void when the lands don’t go with the title and his assistance of Luke is ultimately fruitless. If this is the story of the family history and struggle, then Turpin doesn’t need to be there. The Dick Turpin stuff invades the book, makes the Rookwood family drama stand and deliver and even makes off with it for the ride to York. The only thing that really connects the two is moonlight. One is a phantom, arial text full of ghosts, curses and shifting reality whilst the other is a deeply earthy, earth-bound text with material worries, slang and moments of down and dirty life. What a thrilling, ridiculous, overblown book this is.įirst off, it is a genius idea to mix the Gothic and Newgate novels for the simple reason that they don’t have any reason belonging together.
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