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This is the book chosen as Book of the Month by the Book Break book club I run. October was literature classic month, which I wasn't exactly looking forward to. It wasn't the book I voted for (To Kill a Mockingbird, in case you were wondering) but when The Legend of Sleepy Hollow won I breathed a sigh of relief. It could have been worse, I could have been reading Middlemarch! Moreover I got my copy from Amazon for 90p, which I thought a bargain. The movie, which I bought on DVD earlier this month, is one I love. So reading the book was something I was quite looking forward to. The book arrived this afternoon and I happily settled down to read the slim 50 page story, expecting to be thrilled and scared by the headless horseman. A page into the story I knew I hated it! The writing style was really awkward, with incessant run on sentences packed full of commas. There must have been a full stop shortage when he wrote it! I have nothing against period writing, and have a deep seated passion for well written prose however difficult it is to decipher, but Irving confused and obfuscated his work with pointless asides that added nothing to the narrative. Once of my pet hates in books is overly detailed descriptive passages that try to fill in the background your imagination is trying to build for itself whilst reading. Maybe I just have too vivid an imagination, but the descriptions in this story just cluttered up the picture of Sleepy Hollow I had in my mind. The story had one line of dialogue, and all the rest was detailed description and inept storytelling. It was awful to read. Another major problem for me was my utter dislike and loathing of Ichabod Crane. From his first introduction (he doesn't appear till page 5) he is portrayed as this prideful, highly-strung and unpleasant character. A whole page is dedicated to informing us just how good he is at beating his young pupils, and how he goes easy on the weaklings but thrashes the strong ones well. I understand times have changed and schools used to be violent and harsh places but the terms used paint Ichabod as a tyrannical little dictator who only feels adequate when ruling his empire. His attitude to the parents he boards with and works for is cringe worthy, treating them as little more than meal tickets to be used for his own ends. The worst thread in this
short but infuriating tale is the 'love' story. The recently blossomed
and now eligible Katrina Van Tassel enters the story, but is never
really given character other than to say she's coquettish. Ichabod
visits her home, as her singing teacher (let's skip over the
inappropriate relationship between a pupil and teacher and concentrate
on Iccy's other problems) and sees the affluence of her father. The farm
is packed with animals Iccy instantly imagines being served up to him by
his future wife while he waits for her father dies so he can get his
hands on her dosh. Ahhhhh. The tone adopted to discuss his rival, Brom,
is makes him out to be little less than a thug, but in fact he's brave,
strong and handsome. In fact, everything that Iccy isn't. Icabod's
distain is clear, and it's about this point Irving chips in to let us
know that Crane is in fact 'our hero', which made me wonder if he'd
figured out most readers might not think so. Let's face it, with his It wasn't until the last few pages that the actual ghost story was introduced. Instead of building a scary atmosphere with his passion for description, Irving screwed the reader over totally by making a mad dash for the end of the story, painting a sketchy picture with little or no content. It was really disappointing. Had the headless horseman seemed real to me I'd have been cheering him on in the final battle, unfortunately he wasn't in the least bit scary. I hated this book. How it ever became a classic I'll never know. As far as I could tell it had no redeeming qualities, but the most unforgivable thing it lacked was a simple story thread. The small township haunted by the terrifying headless horseman was a fabulous idea, proved by the Tim Burton movie, but Washington Irving truly buggered it up. One thing is certain, there's no way I'll be tempted to read the second story in this book!
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