A review by alrautio
The Italian; or, The confessional of the black penitents by Ann Radcliffe

2.0

Had to read this for class.... never again. Almost as much of a drag as "Mrs. Dalloway" to get through. There is so much unnecessary discourse, I actually screamed several times. There are so many irritating characters, I'll be honest, I skipped entire sections that they were in. There is nothing--I repeat, NOTHING--more infuriating than a bad storyteller, and given that this entire book is essentially hearsay from one character to another (concerning stupid plans, unnecessarily convoluted and yet sadly predictable plots, and the general inability to be honest which would literally just have solved everything from the start), there is a metric s**t ton of dialogue and there are only two characters than can speak in any way that can even loosely be called "coherent" and "concise".

I couldn't help but feel the majority of this book was like... pointless? Maybe I just don't get it. I adored "The Monk", and "The Italian" was supposed to be a response to it, so perhaps it's fitting that my adoration of the former is met with disdain in equal measure for the latter. This book took me a month to get through. I don't think I've ever taken this long to read a book... ever. I wanted to like it. Alas... nay. It's frivolous drama with an unfortunately awesome setting. My favourite parts were descriptions of the gloom. If the entire book had the people and plots removed and had only the aesthetic, it would have been a vast improvement.