I had high hopes for J. Sheridan Le Fanu's The Wyvern Mystery. I heard of him in Dorothy Sayers' Gaudy Night; her character Harriet Vane is doing research on him and compares him favorably with one of my favorite Victorian sensationalist authors, Wilkie Collins. So of course I wanted to find out if I'd been missing anything. It turns out I really hadn't been. (Be warned: there are spoilers in this review.)

Oh, it's Gothic-y and ghost-y. Yes, it's tragic and stagily dramatic. Yes, people die and there are dark secrets galore. So why couldn't I settle in and enjoy it?

Firstly, I wasn't a big fan of Le Fanu's style. He switches between the past and present tenses for no apparent reason and the writing feels sloppy. He also uses contractions in the narrative, which is something I can't get used to in a "classic" work.

Secondly, the plot just didn't grab me. Young Alice Maybell is the ward of the old lord of Wyvern, Lord Fairfield, who is old enough to be her grandfather — and who wants to marry her. She runs away and marries his son Charles, an indolent but not wholly despicable man who is in severe financial difficulties. They remove to Carwell Grange, the property left to Charles by his mother. There Alice sees a vision that bodes ill to the Fairfield brides... and of course it starts coming true almost immediately. Tragedies of various kinds ensue, and sadly I didn't care enough about any of the characters to really be engaged with their struggles.

Not only that, but toward the end of the book Le Fanu introduces new characters in a new setting and completely drops the ones we'd been following for the first 200 pages. There were only a few pages left and I was starting to feel desperate. How will we ever wrap this up in time?

I did have a complaint about Bertha, the tall, blind, foul Dutchwoman. When Wilkie Collins does a foreign character, he does it right. The character's speech is heavily accented (yet still quite readable), and he/she displays an otherness that is very distinctive. Le Fanu's Bertha has the potential to be wonderfully creepy, but he doesn't make enough use of her. Her eventual death is so anti-climactic for such an unusual personage. And did he intentionally name her Bertha, in reference to Charlotte Bronte's mad-wife character Bertha in Jane Eyre? The Wyvern Mystery was published in 1869, 22 years after Bronte's famous novel. I wonder.

Another weakness in the story was that Le Fanu never explains how it was possible that there should be any ambiguity about whether or not Charles was married to Bertha. What kind of arrangement would lead to the marriage being questionable? Either you're married or you aren't. Divorce is never mentioned, so it wasn't that. It just doesn't make sense.

I was also a bit disappointed in the way the story didn't have much to do with the title. It's a nice title; "Wyvern" has such craggy edges to it and it would have been nice if the ill luck and hot blood of the Fairfields was linked to the symbol of their estate, the wyvern. Certainly their love of gold and fiery tempers were dragonish enough to warrant a comparison.

There were a couple good things. I enjoyed trying to figure out Harry throughout the book. I think there is a little ambiguity still about just how much of a villain he is. Yes, he wants the estate despite all his protestations to the contrary. He is a liar and a conniver. He switches the baby heir with a sick one from a workhouse, which dies according to plan. The real baby is sent to live in the country, with Harry pretending that it was his own natural son. Thankfully he has time before he dies to confess what he had done (another point in his favor that he would even confess it). But still, it was very dastardly. In some ways this story felt like Silas Marner gone wrong.

I have to confess that if I were to see another Le Fanu book at a library booksale, I would probably snatch it up in hopes that it would be better than this one. It had all the ingredients I usually enjoy; there was just something wrong with the way it was baked. ( )

Who is the mysterious blind woman? How does her story have any involvement with the heroine of the novel, Alice Maybell? What will happen to poor Alice and her infant son? Find out by reading this Victorian gothic.

Another Le Fanu work that I highly recommend. ( )