Customer Reviews

The Goddess: A Demon

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I'm afraid I share the tastes of late Victorian readers for sensational plots, exotic crimes, witty love stories and sinister London fogs - all delightfully present in Richard Marsh's 1900 novel, The Goddess, A Demon.

The title may be awkward, but Marsh's storytelling is smooth and rapid-fire. Narrator John Ferguson is awakened by a terrible dream of murder. Soon after a beautiful young woman walks through his French window covered with blood. It's love at first sight, despite the blood, and despite the murder down the hall of Ferguson's friend Edwin Lawrence. Ferguson devotes all his energies for the rest of the book trying to prove the innocence of his late-night visitor. Not easy.

Ferguson is a giant of a man who's led a rough life in odd corners of the world while making his fortune. Another compelling character is Doctor Hume who's obsessed with mental diseases. Hume believes everyone has a screw loose somewhere and may break out in madness anytime under pressure (a popular nineteenth-century psychological theory). Even the reader can't help questioning the sanity of the main characters, one by one, and this makes for a certain delicious tension.

The reader is treated to bizarre scenes of paranoia, obsession, hallucination, amnesia and claustrophobia. But as always, Marsh retains his sense of humor and keeps us amused as well as anxious.

Although there is a goddess of sorts lurking in the background, this is not a supernatural tale. The editor describes Marsh's novel as "urban gothic." Her excellent introduction reveals some startling facts about Marsh's life and discusses nineteenth-century attitudes to urban decay, social unrest and mental illness.

I love Richard Marsh's highly imaginative novels. And Valencourt Books has done a tremendous job with this book. The introduction and appendices will appeal to scholars. The novel itself is great fun for purely recreational readers (like me) of popular Victorian fiction.