The Romance of the Forest

by Ann Radcliffe

[inlibrisveritas]

The Romance of the Forest was a group read along on Litsy and my first experience with Ann Radcliffe. In truth, I had never heard of her before and was intrigued after I found out she was one of the founders of the Gothic romance genre.
I can't say I enjoyed it a lot, however. She has some great prose at times, but it gets weighed down by the excessive use of poetry and huge lulls in the plot. Something really really interesting will happen and the next huge chunk of pages will be devoted to the slight temperature our main character felt that she had at the time. I do like the overall plot of it, but as I said the execution could have used some extra work.
I read this in a serial type format so that surely didn't help the weird boring factor, however, it did help me finish a book I'd want to abandon for later. I'm not sure if I'll try her other work or not.