By Sara Hopkins
For years my sister and I have had a friendly competition: come Christmastime, we gift each other the most obscure yet awesome book we can find. Since we both love this tradition, we spend most of the year rummaging through used book bins and scanning Amazon.com reviews, constantly searching for that perfect novel, the one that is so good it’s impossible to believe we haven’t read before. It’s a wonderful tradition that brought us both a lot of joy and literature over the years, and we always looked forward to it. Note the past tense. That’s because last year I gave my sister The Monk, and it changed everything. She read it in two days, loaned it back to me so I could do the same and this year we gave each other sweaters and then reminisced about what a great book The Monk is.
Written by Matthew Lewis in 1794, The Monk is a classic of Gothic literature. What distinguishes it from the many other passable, entertaining Gothic novels which fit the somewhat sterile Webster’s definition of “a style of fiction characterized by the use of desolate or remote settings and macabre, mysterious, or violent incidents” is that Sure, it has monks, a creepy monastery, an evil nun, a beautiful but wronged heroine, her heartbroken lover, and a guilty conscience. But it also has incest, bandits, sexual obsession, broken vows, supernatural temptations, and an uncanny insight into the human psyche. Oh, and it’s set in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Even better, when Lewis really gets going he goes so over the top, it’s actually intentionally tongue-in-cheek. My kind of guy.
Inspired by the work of Ann Radcliffe and read by absolutely everyone who was anyone two hundred years ago (even Sir Walter Scott reviewed it), The Monk is a fantastic novel that is sure to shock and engross even today. Stick with it through the early pages, Lewis has a lot of groundwork to lay; but once he’s placed all his piees on the literary chessboard, put your feet up, turn off your phone, and lose yourself in this classic.
PS The Kindle edition is free on Amazon.com.
