Customer Reviews

Something New (Broadview Literary Texts)

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This epistolary novel tells the tale of how twoinsensitive, superficial men reform themselves under the influence of the extremely ugly heiressOlivia Campbell and her beautiful friend. Plot does indeed avoid the cliched ending, but it isn'tenough to save the story from some tedium, especially if you're familiar with common themes of the time. Strong echoes of Richardson's classic novel,Clarissa, run throughthe book, but Plumtree's novel fails to rise to the moral glory and sadistic depths that Richardson hits. Onthe other hand, it isn't a million words long either ... The use of cliched subplots (for 1801) was one of the book's biggest weaknesses: the ghost that isn't a ghost; the persecuted, beautiful cottager; the mysteriousorphan, the contrast of the faithful old retainer and the money-grubbing, self-aggrandizing,ladder-climbing modern servant, etc. If these plots aren't familiar to you, you will enjoy this introduction to some of the common plots of the period.