Added on 03/30/08
Amazon.com Originally published in 1957, The Doubtful Guest serves as a prime example of the beauty, eccentricity, and brilliance of Edward Gorey's work. If the book was read aloud without revealing the accompanying black-and-white drawings, you...
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Amazon.com Originally published in 1957, The Doubtful Guest serves as a prime example of the beauty, eccentricity, and brilliance of Edward Gorey's work. If the book was read aloud without revealing the accompanying black-and-white drawings, you might guess the tale came from the quirky genius of Dr. Seuss. The rhyming couplets and nonsensical verse (about an even more nonsensical creature) feel familiar, but in Gorey's skilled hands, the experience becomes altogether new. The doubtful guest shows up unannounced and unwelcome, yet its presence is accepted after only a brief interlude of screaming. The staid, pale, Victorian inhabitants of the mansion alternately stare and glare at the doubtful guest as it tears out whole chapters from books, peels the soles of its white canvas shoes, and broods while lying on the floor ("inconveniently close to the drawing-room door"). Strangely, or rather, typically, as this is a Gorey book, the stymied occupants never ask the guest to leave--and in... See less
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