The Fall of the House of Usher

This was a perfect short re-read for Halloween this year! Fall of the House of Usher was my first Poe story and one of my very first few brushes with horror as a child, and certainly one of the most vivid. I remember it so well that I've only wanted to re-read it just a couple of times since to refresh my memory on it.

The prose in here was more challenging than I recall. I'm no stranger to 19th century works, but Poe's writing, in this story in particular, is more purple-prosey than I expected. I'm glad that I had read an abridged, simplified version as a child (with illustrations too), otherwise I'd never have understood a thing about it. Even now, I found myself having to re-read sentences and whole paragraphs to really get what was going on. In that sense, it reminded me quite a bit of the writing style of Jane Eyre, which checks out given that both are such mainstays of Gothic literature.

There's also a lot more symbolism and imagery here that I never fully appreciated, but I won't delve into it here for fear of sounding pretentious.

This is deservedly a classic in horror and gothic lit, and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in those genres.