Dangerous Liaisons review
Feb. 28th, 2009 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearAt long last, I capitulated to lareinemisere's insistence that this is a book that must be read, and shifted Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos (what a great name!) to the top of my pile. This was as much a reaction to having read five books in a row that I didn't like as much as anything else - I really needed to read something *good* and was fairly well assured of finding that in Laclos.
And indeed, it was extremely good - involving, masterfully put together, and deliciously shocking in just how evil some of its characters are. Iago has nothing on the Marquise de Merteuil! It's a shame that I already knew the plot (having seen two film adaptations of it - dreadful, I know, to have succumbed to the audiovisual versions before enjoying the written word) but, even knowing what was coming, the culmination of utter doom at the end seemed overwhelming. It's also a shame that my French is nowhere near up to reading it in the original, as this would always be preferable, and I know from other works I have read both in the original and in translation that there is always something lost.
Still, a good four days spent, my faith in good literature has been restored, and I have assauged lareinemisere's doubts of my sanity that were produced by my apparent lack of enthusiasm for reading the book in the first place!
And indeed, it was extremely good - involving, masterfully put together, and deliciously shocking in just how evil some of its characters are. Iago has nothing on the Marquise de Merteuil! It's a shame that I already knew the plot (having seen two film adaptations of it - dreadful, I know, to have succumbed to the audiovisual versions before enjoying the written word) but, even knowing what was coming, the culmination of utter doom at the end seemed overwhelming. It's also a shame that my French is nowhere near up to reading it in the original, as this would always be preferable, and I know from other works I have read both in the original and in translation that there is always something lost.
Still, a good four days spent, my faith in good literature has been restored, and I have assauged lareinemisere's doubts of my sanity that were produced by my apparent lack of enthusiasm for reading the book in the first place!
