The House of the Seven Gables (Charles E. Merrill Standard Editions)

Rating:
Summary: do not read this book
Review: this book is horrible, it is too long, confusing and just flat out "sux" i dont recomend this book to any one, and for those who like it, I cannot agree. this book is a wast of time, words, presious life and trees. do not support this books production!

Rating:
Summary: Dark and Mysterious Classic
Review: This book is really good. Very deep mystery about a dying witch's curse. It's not a fast-moving thriller, by a slow and methodical one. Every word is chosen so carefully by Hawthorne, that it is fun to read and a challenge for the mind to find the hidden meaning. The novel starts with a discription of the house- the house with human attributes and ends with a lone cat watching the fulfillment of a witch's curse. Really excellent. There's plenty of characterization, hints of incest, and omenious surrounding to keep the reader entertained. Love love loved it, read it in a college American literature class.

Rating:
Summary: Okay....
Review: This book was slow and hard to read, with way 2 many words and boring characters :( i think it would have been way cooler if the house had exploded at the end or something.

Rating:
Summary: Great--for fans of Hawthorne classics!
Review: This is another good Hawthorne book. It builds the characters descriptively so your mind's eye is there. It gives a peak of how things were in that era. Written in his usual, exquisite, expressive use of the English language.

Rating:
Summary: More About Language Than Horror
Review: This is more of a story for the person in love with our language and will leave thrill seekers (and most youngsters) cold. After getting off to a great start for a horror story, the story line sort of bogs down in the middle before coming back to an active pace for a predictable ending.

Hawthorne sets the scene for a family feud between the powerful Pyncheons and the lowly Maules. Through a series of strong arm tactics, the senior Pyncheon brings a curse onto the family with the House of Seven Gables - a house designed and built for Pyncheon by Maule's son on land that had been wrested from the Maule family. After generations of failure and thwarted ambition, the Pyncheon line is almost dead and the curse continues to linger. There is only an old maid with a scowl to scare children, Hepzibah; her brother Clifford who returns from a long imprisonment for the murder of his uncle; Judge Pyncheon, the son of Clifford's victim, an ambitious man who cloaks the depravities of his soul with a false magnanimity; and Phoebe, a country cousin who seems not to be born down with the weight of the curse except through her exposure to the others. When the Judge dies under mysterious circumstances in the House of Seven Gables, the curse is set to either finally destroy the Pyncheons and the Maules or to expire and leave them to a new peace.

House of Seven Gables is more notable for me in the language that he uses. The way he describes everything is absolutely beautiful, particularly when he is describing the young women - " All her little womanly ways, budding out of her like blossoms on a young fruit tree, had their effect on him, and sometimes caused his very heart to tingle with the keenest thrills of pleasure. At such moments - for the effect was seldom more than momentary - the half-torpid man would be full of harmonious life, just as a long-silent harp is full of sound, when the musician's fingers sweep across it."



Rating:
Summary: House of the boring gables
Review: This is quit possibly the worst book i have ever read, it was dry, there was no plot, and it was hard to understand. if you are considering buying this book, bad idea...don't waste your penny, i recommend not reading anything by Nathaniel Hawthorne, he is the worst writter in the history of book writing.

Rating:
Summary: This is Not for teenagers.
Review: This may be a good book for adults. I read it in 8th grade and could not stand it. It is very slow moving and descriptive. This is not what teenagers want.

Rating:
Summary: One of My Favorite Hawthorne Novels
Review: This mysterious novel about a cursed family and its mansion is one of Hawthorne's few works with a happy ending. Perhaps Hawthorne, when he wrote it, had come to some degree of peace with the curse that was rumored to have been placed upon his own family. The novel is interesting, and it contains some profound insights. It boasts one of Hawthorne's "reformer" characters, Holgrave. Hawthorne did not seem to have much faith in reform and reformers, but Holgrave is a more sympathetic character than Hawthorne's other reformers, because he is portrayed as an optimistic youth who will eventually outgrow the excesses of his reformative tendencies.



Rating:
Summary: Nice Novel
Review: This was a slow yet interesting read that definitely helps to build a strong vocabulary, something that is hard to find these days. I found the plot interesting yet it moved somewhat too slow for me, especially at the end, which seems to drag on for a couple of chapters without getting to the point. Overall, it is a recommended read, if only to experience the artistic writing style.

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of American gothic
Review: This wonderfully atmospheric novel takes the raw materials of the typical gothic tale -- hidden treasure, ghosts, family secrets, curses -- and transforms them into a work of art that succeeds both as an escapist orgy of character- and scene-painting, and as an exploration of familial "traits," depression and anxiety, aging, classism in America, and the countervailing promise of technological advancement and intermarriage. Don't be put off by the rather forced Dickensianism of the early chapters. The book will eventually cast its spell if you let it.