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Rating: 
Summary: The best Gothic novel ever written
Review: "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a tour de force of Gothicism, however, the psychological profundity of each character distinguishes this novel from typical examples of the genre. The multi-layered narrative, while occasionally confusing, is worth the concentration as Maturin weaves a complex and gripping tale. Of particular interest is the Tale of the Indian, which is concerned with the influence of Melmoth over Immalee, an innocent girl, alone on an Indian island. The description of her innocence is magnificent in its simplicity and effectiveness. An absolutely astounding, challenging and exciting book.
Rating:
Summary: La añoranza de los tiempos pasados
Review: Es de admirarse como la iglesia catolica cometio tanta barbarie en contra de la humanidad, aprovechandose de que eran un poder en los siglos de la edad media, manejando el miedo como principal arma, y la inquisicion como su estandarte. Gran parte del libro de Maturin habla de las barbaries cometidas, pero te deja un sabor de alivio que en la actualidad la iglesia a perdido ese poder de imposicion, pero no el poder del despilfarro, notandose claramente que nuestros curas de hoy, tratan aun de meterse en temas politicos, dominar masas etc... añorando el poder que ellos tenian siglos atras.....
Rating: 
Summary: 3 stars for Maturin, 2 stars at most for Sage
Review: First, a huge caveat for prospective buyers. This isn't really a Faustian novel. What it is (judging purely by volume) is a satire of Catholic monks. As far as that goes, it's an extremely well-written satire, but unless you feel strongly about Catholic monks, the point of the satire might seem somewhat blunted. The tragic aspects work much better, although a deeper insight into Melmoth himself (he comes across as a one-dimensional bogeyman-with-a-sinister-mirthless-laugh) would have strengthened the novel immensely. Let's face it, the real attraction of Faustian fiction is the Faustian character, and Melmoth is a sideliner in his own book.Victor Sage's notes range from helpful elucidations of obscure references to (far too many) irritating explications of the "multiple layering of the text" --- as if anybody really cares about such nitpicking academic twaddle. Seriously, Sage's primary concern is the "fracturing of narrative," not the worth of the story itself. He's symptomatic of That Type of literary critic who leaves his piece strewn like a disassmbled Swiss watch that will never run again.
Rating:
Summary: Melmoth - The Anti-Quixote
Review: Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein." Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer. "Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him. Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer. This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.
Rating:
Summary: Melmoth - The Anti-Quixote
Review: Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is a brilliantly constructed work of gothic fiction. One hundred years after Jonathan Swift, Maturin takes up his Irish predecessor's gift for harsh, even malevolent satire against any and all offenders - organized religion, government, lovers, warriors - even making broad, devastating comments on humanity in general. Maturin and his characters are quick to point out that this is not 'Radcliffe-romance' gothic, in the direct style of works like "The Mysteries of Udolpho". They are right. Rather than the seemingly landscape-obsessed, rationalistic Radcliffe, Maturin takes his direct gothic influences from the claustrophobic psychological terrors of Godwin's "Caleb Williams," Lewis' "The Monk," and M.W. Shelley's "Frankenstein." Unlike "The Monk," however, Maturin's novel does not rely heavily on Lewis' supernatural machinery (ghosts, demons, bleeding nuns, etc.). Instead, he offers several apparently unconnected stories that concentrate on families in desperate straits and individuals in extreme crises, pushing the limits of man's inhumanity to man. The connecting element, the wild card with the wild eyes, that pops up just when the characters most/least need him, is Melmoth the Wanderer. "Melmoth" also draws heavily from Cervantes' "Don Quixote," which provides a great point of comparison for the main character. Where Don Quixote was a wandering knight, pledged to help the helpless, Melmoth is a wandering agent of evil, whose mission is to prey on the helpless. Melmoth has 150 years to tempt the indigent and desperate into selling their souls for wealth, power, or simple relief, and trading places with him. Again looking backward to "Quixote" and forward to Stoker's "Dracula," "Melmoth" is also heavily concerned with it's own construction as a text. The various stories are pieced together by eyewitnesses, interviewers, and ancient manuscripts, often at several removes from their originals. There is even one gentleman in the novel who is collecting material to write a book about Melmoth the Wanderer. This is not a book for everyone. Maturin often provides almost excessively long preludes before any action occurs in his nested narratives. The traumas he inflicts on Melmoth's targets can drive you to the point of insanity yourself. However, if you are a admirer of the psychological thriller without all the show of your standard gothic-terror text, "Melmoth the Wanderer" is sure to keep you busy for days, if not weeks.
Rating:
Summary: Defend or damn Melmoth for yourself
Review: Maturin's novel relates the story of Melmoth, a scholar who traded his soul to Infernal powers in return for answers to all of his questions about the Universe. He has 100 extra years to live; in that time, if he can find someone to volunteer to take his place in Hell, he is free. Otherwise, at the end of the 100 years, Melmoth will be damned. Melmoth the Wanderer is a Gothic novel in the highest tradition of the Romantic period. It's structure, however, makes it unique. It folds in upon itself, beginning with the present and ending with the future, but somewhere in between moving progressively backwards as the narrator tries to unlock the secrets of Melmoth's life, just as Melmoth tried to unlock the secrets of the Universe. The characters, Melmoth, Emmalee, the many Jews who help Melmoth, are beautifully written and engaging. The novel is worth reading for Maturin's virtuoso touch with structure alone, but also for the wonderful touches and passages, particularly where Melmoth struggles with his conscience and reveals that even fiends have a soul. The novel questions what it means to search for knowledge, to have a family, to be in love, and to accept responsibility for your own fate. Melmoth the Wanderer asks questions about why mercy is so hard to find, why supposedly pious people often cause the most suffering, and what it might take to redeem a minion of Hell. An ambiguous ending caps off the novel and allows you to answer these questions for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: "He will certainly be damned-"...
Review: Melmoth was presented with an oppurtunity perhaps a bargain to "...go conquering and to conquer,..." the world ageless and omnipotent for 150 years. However, at the end of this hourglass, like Faust, he must enter the folds of his dealer. Melmoth the wanderer is a cursed man. He hasn't choices yet chooses. Maturin holds mirrors at the world reflecting vertiginous glimpses of beauty, injustice, greed, malice, and fear somehow marrying them all. Melmoth is a questioner and his actions are the answers. Convolutions are real. Beliefs wed and divorce. Men fear what they consist. A vast novel well worth the read. Alchemic, Poe, the sea, olive green winds...
Rating: 
Summary: The ultimate Gothic novel
Review: Published in 1820, Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is usually named as the last of the Gothic novels. Gothic here implies the incorporation of Burke's elements of the "sublime", wherein terror and sorrow invoke in the reader a heightened sense of empathy with the events unfolding in the narrative. Maturin pulls out all the stops of his time in creating situations of hopelessness, fear, and both religous and social sadism. Melmoth himself has sold his soul to the devil (will these people *never* learn? ;-) and attempts over the course of scores of years to find someone so desperate that they will take this "bargain" off his hands before the devil comes for his due. The novel is constructed of tales-within-tales, depicting the awful conditions the people Melmoth seeks out find themselves in. For example, the "Tale of the Spaniard" is told by a prisoner of the Inquisition (although this tedious tale takes over 120 pages to even GET to the Inquisition), whose life is still not so horrible that he would willingly trade place with the wandering Melmoth. The narrative is infuriatingly slow and convoluted, and only a perseverance surpassing the average will reward the patient reader with the creation of atmosphere that keeps this book on the "must read" list of true afficiandos of the supernatural. A minor note: Patrick O'Brian pays tribute to the author by naming one of contemporary literature's most well-known characters after him: half of the "Aubrey/Maturin" team of O'Brian's 19th-century novels of naval warfare.
Rating:
Summary: The best Gothic novel ever written
Review: Published in 1820, Maturin's "Melmoth the Wanderer" is usually named as the last of the Gothic novels. Gothic here implies the incorporation of Burke's elements of the "sublime", wherein terror and sorrow invoke in the reader a heightened sense of empathy with the events unfolding in the narrative. Maturin pulls out all the stops of his time in creating situations of hopelessness, fear, and both religous and social sadism. Melmoth himself has sold his soul to the devil (will these people *never* learn? ;-) and attempts over the course of scores of years to find someone so desperate that they will take this "bargain" off his hands before the devil comes for his due. The novel is constructed of tales-within-tales, depicting the awful conditions the people Melmoth seeks out find themselves in. For example, the "Tale of the Spaniard" is told by a prisoner of the Inquisition (although this tedious tale takes over 120 pages to even GET to the Inquisition), whose life is still not so horrible that he would willingly trade place with the wandering Melmoth. The narrative is infuriatingly slow and convoluted, and only a perseverance surpassing the average will reward the patient reader with the creation of atmosphere that keeps this book on the "must read" list of true afficiandos of the supernatural. A minor note: Patrick O'Brian pays tribute to the author by naming one of contemporary literature's most well-known characters after him: half of the "Aubrey/Maturin" team of O'Brian's 19th-century novels of naval warfare.
Rating:
Summary: The Greatest Gothic Novel
Review: Written by a man who assumed his brother's debts and apparently went out of his mind trying to write himself out from under this monetary burden; a man who wore a wafer pasted to the center of his forehead while writing, and who fancied the ballroom and dancing just as much (or maybe more) than the pulpet;--Melmoth the Wanderer is simply the oddest and most delicious concoction of mad prose this side of Abiezzar Cope. The story is a vertiginously creaky assemblage of vignettes that spiral in and out of each other in a bewildering--and sometimes belabored--manner. We often wish we could rip out 50 or so pages of purple prose here and there and throw them into the mouths of the nearest BLACK DOGS from Hades, but we must restrain ourselves enough to follow Melmoth (the chuckling friend--or should we say fiend?--of John Dee and Edward Kelly it turns out)--to his ultimate damnation. Scattered throughout the text are poppies of arcane lore--the very kind of volume that Poe would have had in his hands when the Raven came tapping at his chamber door! Not only did Poe love this book, but so did Doestoyevsky, Balzac, Lautreamont, Oscar Wilde, Scott, and hoards of other literary greats! Hey--add your name to the list!
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