Penguin Popular Classics

Travelling to the winner of the Classics sweeps, enjoy!

Please let us know when you release it again...

The Scartet Letter arrived safely in Delphi today, along with a cute bookmark, a beautiful postcard, and some Halloween goodies : )

Thank you very much for your great parcel estelle1806!

Well... Nathaniel Hawthorne had good intentions, his original idea was decent, but unfortunately this book was a difficult and rather obnoxious read to me.

Part of the problem is that although the author had an open mind and progressive way of thinking on religious and social aspects comparing with his contemporaries, I think that many of his thoughts, assumptions and theories -and especially the way he presents those- feel outdated and off nowadays.
Many of his assessments, the way he constructs his plot and the drawning of his characters felt really alien, at least to me!

Furthermore, the dialogues seemed completely artificial - I doubt any real human being ever talked that way, even on the 17th century- and the characters' choices and behaviors even more artificial - no real little girl would talk or act the way the author depicts little Pearl!-
The book serves as a pretense for Nathaniel Hawthorn to say what he wants to say and tries to be completely poignant and didactic.

The above elements wouldn't be the end of the world if at least the lay-out of the book and the prose were somehow agreeable. Unfortunately, I found the language too pompous and the prose very tiring, using very long sentences. Futhermore the narration of the plot and whatever action there is in the book, get disrupted by paragraph after paragraph of thεories, analysis, inner thoughts, unnecessary detailed descriptions of irrelevant stuff like natural environment or various objects or so, that make the text far from flowing! Been non-native English speaker might have made this book a bit more difficult for me, but I don't think that's just me!

The author piles hyperbole after hyperbole as the book proceeds, but towards the end, there appears some hope that some element of normality, reality and optimism might take over the plot and characters. This hope is short-lived while the novel leads in a crescento of hyperbole and melodrama. The very end mentioning what became of some of the characters is one more disappointment to the reader...

This is a short book. Maybe if it was even shorter, it would appeal somehow more to an averrage reader? Or it just wasn't the right book for me right now, I don't know...

Thank you very much estelle1806 for the opportunity to read this and make up my own mind about it! I hope future readers will enjoy this more than me.

This book will continue its travels in the wider Athens area....

And then... who knows?

Good Luck little book and Don't forget to write your news from time to time...