A review by ghostroom217
Edgar Huntly Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker: Or, Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker by Charles Brockden Brown

2.0

I'd read two of Brown's gothic novels (in the Library of America series) and enjoyed them well enough, but this one was a trial to get through. In a prefacing line, the author expresses pleasure and gratitude that his previous novel - Arthur Mervyn - was so well received, and that 'Edgar Huntly' had been written in a similar vein in hopes of appealing to those same readers.

This was my first misgiving, though the book started out fine and kept my attention for roughly a third of its length. After that, it dropped its narrative thread and seemed to jump on any distraction that wandered into the author's head. Maybe this was a result of the common serial format, but at one point I was reminded of an early season of '24' where one of the characters was menaced by a loose tiger for an episode or two. Brown jumps from situation to situation with little in the way of connective fiber, grasping for some new thrill to excite and please his readers rather than maintaining the integrity of the novel as a whole.

Another frequent intrusion was a densely-written page or two explaining motivation (so obviously in the face of common sense or reason) so his protagonist could maneuver into another short-lived and inconsequential plot contrivance.

The last 20 pages are unlikely expositions of how these random events tie together. I won't give any spoilers here, aside from logic being largely absent and coincidence playing an overextending role.

I'd skip this one or try one of his earlier novels first.