Ormond: Or, the Secret Witness (Broadview Literary Texts Series)

Rating:
Summary: Get To Know the Father of American Fiction
Review: Although this is not Brown's greatest work (Edgar Huntly and Weiland are superior) it is still a compelling work. Brown has taken the Gothic genre and manipulated it's stock images and characters to create unqiue worlds. The novel starts off slowly, but builds as Constantia unwittingly comes under the influence of Ormond. We are never certain whether we are steeped in a stereotypical Gothic world or perhaps uncomfortable close to reality.
Typical of Brown, the ending is deceptively complete. As an author attempting to understand that anxieties and fears of the New Republic, Brown addresses an American readership with themes that are still compelling today. The limitations of reason, the limitations of morality, and the place of faith in our lives.
Brown's four Gothic novels should be read together, to get a complete sense of his concerns for the nation, but the Library of America thoughtlessly left this novel out with their printing of Brown's works. One can only hope that with the continuing interest in Brown's fiction this novel will become available to the reading public.