Of course this is nonsense… of course both Karel and Helen are sure this is nonsense… until… did that shadow just move? Are there more black birds int he square than usual? Anyway, what have they done to have to worry about Melmoth anyway…? If she persuades you to join her you are then damned to roam the world with her in an interminable journey watching the worst of humanity as we all stumble and fall on our path. The manuscript tells the story of Melmoth.Īccording to legend, Melmoth the Witness has roamed the world since the days of Christ (or maybe longer) looking for the weak and cowardly, standing as witness to their base crimes when there is no one else to see. One afternoon Karel comes to Helen to tell her that Hoffman is dead and now he is afraid because Hoffman passed his research on to him. Karel had made another acquaintance at the library, an old man named Hoffman. She has two friends that she made almost in spite of her best efforts, a couple Karel and Thea, that she met in the library. She rents a room from a nasty, mean old woman, she only eats the bare minimum she needs to survive, her coat is old and threadbare.
She works as a translator and during her time here has lived as spartan a life as possible, purposefully choosing the least comfortable options whenever possible. Helen Franklin has sent herself into a self-imposed exile in Prague. If you chicken out in the moment of truth, how do you live with yourself? Or to even recognize when it is time to do it. It is very easy to SAY you would put your life on the line, it is another thing to actually do it. This book is for every person who has ever said, “If I were in Nazi Germany there is NO WAY I would have gone along with what they were doing! I’m a good person and that was evil!” Are you sure? Are you really sure, sure? Because there are a lot of people who thought they were good people who facilitated horrible things, most often not by pulling the trigger, but by being too afraid or deluded to step in front of the gun.
Fair warning, I don’t give any major spoilers ahead, but this is a very atmospheric book, so if you want to go in clean, which might be a good thing, I’ll just tell you this is a great, creepy, thoughtful book so go read it. It’s always the humans… but not always int he way you think. It is eerie and creepy with a ton of atmosphere and most of the fear and horror coming from not jump scares, but just that feeling that something is going to happen. This is a modern novel that strikes the perfect feeling of a Gothic novel in the style of Poe or Shelly.
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