A Phantom Lover

Oh, YES! As a huge fan of gothic horror, this sublime novel hits all the right notes. Beautifully written with an artist's eye for descriptive detail, the story has that deliciously slow building suspense I love to find in old stories of this genre. Add in a mysterious family history and the hints of a spectral being lurking the halls and grounds of a marvelous Kentish manor house and this reader was left deeply satisfied by a story well told. My only regret: as a novella (a mere 64 pages in length), this story ends all too soon. Not in the context of the story itself - that is complete in its character/plot development and unrushed in its delivery - but in that I was enjoying the story so much I did not want it to end. Yes, I am show more gushing about this one.

I downloaded this ebook as part of the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction "Reclaim Her Name" series of books by women authors originally published under male pseudonyms. I am now on the hunt for more Vernon Lee/Violet Paget stories to fill my ereader with. show less

I stumbled into this book when Baileys had a campaign of women authors publishing under a pseudonym. Reclaim her name -campaign offered free e-books and I decided to read this. It was like many gothic stories very descriptive. Not too much happened and from the beginning it was quite clear where it was going. In that sense the story was even boring. However, I found the language quite fascinating and modern.

Can be found free here on Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8180

This is actually a short story more than a novella - not that I can be exact, given that it's an ebook and I completely forget the conversion that someone once posted on how many pages a KB adds up to. In any case this is a great start if you want to try some Vernon Lee. I'll have to sum it up as - does a lady love a phantom, or does a phantom love a lady? Or both? Or neither? Yes, it's one of those "what exactly is going on here" - only you can easily make your own mind up. And you might be able to answer yes to all of of the above questions.

A sample quote:

13% in "...Gradually the embers grew paler; the figures in the tapestry more shadowy; the columned and

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curtained bed loomed out vaguer; the room seemed to fill with greyness; and my eyes wandered to the mullioned bow-window, beyond whose panes, between whose heavy stonework, stretched a greyish-brown expanse of sore and sodden park grass, dotted with big oaks; while far off, behind a jagged fringe of dark Scotch firs, the wet sky was suffused with the blood-red of the sunset. Between the falling of the raindrops from the ivy outside, there came, fainter or sharper, the recurring bleating of the lambs separated from the mothers, a forlorn, quavering, eerie little cry."

I'd quote more descriptions of the house because they made me fall a bit in love with it - but from that you can see that such descriptions do go on a bit. That would be the only down side to Lee. show less