Customer Reviews

Return to the House of Usher

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book had me captivated from page 1. The author did more than just "update" Poe's original tale--he made it his own. Although you may have an inkling half-way through of the final conclusion, if you are reading it during a big windstorm at night, you don't really notice. I would recommend this book for any Poe lover & I look forward to reading other books of Robert Poe.

Robert Poe pens a credible modern tale with enough supernatural undertones to tingle your spine but balanced with modern detective novel explanations whenever reason becomes over-taut. The allusions to Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher are manifold and a pre-re-reading of that classic is recommended. Characters in "Return..." are well rounded, with one or two minor exceptions (the mob lawyer from up North) and the details of the plot ahead are never easily guessed although I saw some of the underpinnings well ahead of the central character, Charles Poe, but we readers aren't blinded by his fateful ancestry. What I missed in this story was the archaic (even in the 1800's) diction of E.A.Poe and his semantic mastery. Rarely in "Return..." is there a well turned run-on sentence or a sequence of multisyllabic verbage to cause a mental tongue twister causing the reader to pause, and consider.

This book had me hooked from the first paragraph. The fact that Robert Poe took a classic story and made it his own in such a unique way held me until the end. I like to re-read certain "scary" books during the month of October, and I plan on including this book on my re-read list. I love his descriptions of the impending hurricane and how it is incorporated in the overall theme. Great read!

It is almost impossible to write a decent sequel to a Poe short story or poem. I was skeptical until I began reading this novel. Robert Poe did his famous ancestor proud.

---- RETURN TO THE HOUSE OF USHER Robert Poe Forge, Oct 1996, $22.95, 288 pp. For over a century and a half, just south of Richmond, the ruins of the House of Usher laid. Everything change when Dr. Roderick Usher and his sister, psychiatrist Dr. Madeline Usher open up a sanitorium at the very location where his ancestors faced a colossal collapse. However, strange phenomena occur and Roderick calls his fellow Virginia University alumni John Poe, a nearby reporter, to investigate the goings on. John, who has not seen or heard from Roderick in five years, travels the seven miles to the sanitarium. He soon finds himself fighting ghosts, a mad doctor, searching his strange inheritance of a casket containing his revered relative's notes on Usher, and struggling with some modern day crooks. John may find out what is behind all the weirdness at Usher Sanitorium, but the price could be very high. John risks death to learn his ancestor's secret to help resolve the events in the present. I know Edgar Allen Poe. He is a friend of mine. Robert Poe is no Edgar Allen Poe. But then again who is. Mr. Poe scribes a modern day gothic tale that would please his namesake. Though the secondary plot involving some nineties laundering and land schemes add little, the primary plot, the Ushers, John, a divorcee, and other secondary characters add immensely to a brilliantly written foreboding sequel. This reviewer recommends reading both novels. Harriet Klausner

Well, Poe doesn't exactly meet the Hardy Boys, but this disappointing thriller feels a bit like an updated Hardys adventure. The characterizations and plotting are simplistic, the dialogue rarely rings true, and the attempt to foist this off as anything resembling the work of Edgar Allan Poe fails almost completely. I say "almost" because, three or four times, the author does manage to get out an interesting bit of atmosphere in homage to Poe's style and to the original story of the Ushers. The novel starts with a promising set-up (a modernization of "Fall of the House of Usher") and a compelling first chapter, but falls off right away and never recovers. The supposedly shocking twist at the end will be all too clear too early on to any thinking readers, especially readers who know the original story. The book is a mystery potboiler, plain and simple (the supernatural elements are weak and explained away completely), with little to recommend it besides the novelty of the author's name.