Can I just admit it? Melmoth is a slog. I bought this book for my Nook at least two years ago and I’m just now finishing it.

A late period gothic novel (which is the say, the 1820s – well after the gothic novel’s Radcliffe fueled heyday of the 1790s), has the anti-clerical bias of the form, but without the intricacy of Radcliffe’s best novels or the over the top salaciousness of Lewis’ Monk.

I think The Monk is the best comparison, or rather it is what Charles Maturin is attempting to re-create in Melmoth the Wanderer. But The Monk kind of killed off the form by taking it nearly as far as it go (a priest rapes his sister at the suggestion of the Devil; Lewis didn’t hold back much).

This has the supernatural elements of Lewis (which Radcliffe famously eschewed), but lacks his lushly, filthily erotic sense of elan.

To give a quick overview: there is a sort of Wandering Jew character, except he’s not Jewish and he’s an instrument of diabolic temptation. His name is Melmoth. There’s also the Melmoth family in Ireland and it’s sole heir who sees a painting of this other Melmoth and maybe sees that other Meltmoth in person. And then there’s the Spanish dude who shipwrecks on the Irish shore after escaping from a monastery and the Inquisition (all of which occurred because of some incredibly evil yet also incredibly over complicated and poorly thought out plan by the confessor of this Spanish dude’s parents). And then there’s the story within the story found by said Spanish dude about how Melmoth finds a beautiful shipwrecked girl who is innocent and pure, who then gets found by her real parents and discovers that the Catholic Church is bad (unlike the pure spirituality in her heart) – oh, and they fall in love, too, and run off to get married.

Anyway…

I don’t mind the complications and permutations – I love Almodovar films, after all – but it just lacks… I don’t know. Something. If you’re going to write something nearly six hundred pages and not put any sex in it, you need to do something to make it pop. Maturin doesn’t make it pop. But you should read The Monk. That s–t is freaky!