The House of the Seven Gables: the Jacqui's Room Notes

In which I offend Hawthorne fans everywhere.

The House of the Seven Gables, a ten word synopsis:

All the coffee in Brazil would still not be enough.

The jacket flap for my Penguin/Putnam edition of this book says:

"This is a tale of an evil house, cursed through the centuries by a man who was hanged for witchcraft, haunted by the ghosts of its sinful dead, racked by the fear of its frightened living."

Yeah, boyee! Sounds awesome, right? Also, according to the jacket flap, the bad guy, Jaffrey Pyncheon, is:

"a devil incarnate whose greedy quest for secret wealth is marked by murder and terrible vengeance from a restless grave."

Whoa! How can this not be the most exciting thing I've read yet?!

Yeah. Well. I am 100% positive the author of this jacket flap has never read this book. Most likely, she fell asleep despite having drunk a six-pack of Red Bull. Then she had haunting, fantastic dreams which she mistook for this book and described on the jacket flap.

In fact, the most interesting thing about this book is that the sort of main character's name is Hepzibah, which, in addition to being a cool name, is also the name of a character in another book I read for the 15 Classics in 15 Weeks challenge. Literary Trivia Champion points to the person who can name that other book in the comments.*

I grant you, I did not give Hawthorne the attention he deserves due to being unable to read more than two pages at a time before falling asleep distracted by the move. Please, someone prove me wrong in the comments. Why am I supposed to love this book?! Any Hawthorne fans out there? Anyone? Bueller?

I will try harder on my ten word synopsis. How about this?

Fascinating back story.
100 pages: nothing happens.
Insipid happy ending.

On to Faulkner's Light in August. What are you reading this week?

* No fair participating, Lizard, since you were the literary queen who originally pointed this out to me.