By Ann Radcliffe 

Published: 1797

Link: https://librivox.org/the-italian-by-ann-radcliffe/

Listening Time: 18 hours 47 minutes

Theme: karma

This story is also by Ann Radcliffe and I felt like she did such a good job with the character development for the heroes in "The Mysteries of Udolpho" that I had high expectations for this one. In this one, though, she takes all of her character development and gives it to the villain. The main characters feel like something out of a romantic comedy: their motives are simplistic, they want to be together and some mysterious entity is trying to keep them apart.

Monk Schedoni has a backstory, and tragedy and angst! And he's eeeevvvvilll. Just read the part where he's convincing a certain main characters mom that it's perfectly OK to kill an Innocent girl. (He almost convinced me!). The twist with his character was pretty remarkable, I'd say it's the best thing about this story.

Unfortunately he's the only thing remotely "Goth-y" in this book. Like I mentioned earlier, everyone else feels like they're living in a rom-com and I think that could have worked towards this story's advantage:

• Vivaldi trying to convince Ellena he loves her (even though her face has been covered with a veil the whole time they've ever been around each other)
• Vivaldi trying to convince Ellena's foster-parentals that he's totes not a creepy stalker (even though he follows her home repeatedly)
• Vivaldi being in turn creepily stalked by an unknown person
• Wacky-side characters who just can't get to the point

But I feel she spent so much time trying to make them funny, she forgot to make them likable.

I feel like this is just one of those stories that you read for the villain. Those aren't always bad types of stories, but at the time I read this I felt like the concept is overdone. Yes, we know sometimes people are marginalized and/or misunderstood...NO it's NOT Ok to kill people!!

There is one really powerful point Mrs Radcliffe makes at the end through the lives of Ellena's "real parents" and how they, unknowing that she's their daughter, help or harm her by the types of lives they lead; the good and bad they do affects her (which in turn affects them). What goes around comes around kind of thing.





I'm currently seeing Vivaldi like this:

I don't think I've ever seen anyone who looks exactly like Schedoni, but he'd be like an older Phantom of The Opera, but with a beard.