In the Library
The Monk
Matthew Lewis, 1796
- Form
- Form Novel
- Reading time
- Reading time 10 hours
- Chapters
- Chapters 12
- Length
- Length 136k words
£1.99
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About the book
A monk climbs into the pulpit of a Capuchin chapel in Madrid, and every soul in the city agrees: no man alive is more virtuous than Ambrosio. Matthew Lewis wrote this novel at nineteen, and it reads like it, reckless, feverish, gleefully unafraid of where a good man's fall can go. Ambrosio's undoing begins with a novice named Rosario, who is not what he seems, and does not stop until it has taken him through seduction, sorcery, matricide, and the rape and murder of the sister he never knew he had. The prose keeps promising restraint and then blowing past it, scene by scene, daring you to look away first. By the final pages the devil is done waiting, and comes to collect exactly what was promised, as merciless as anything Ambrosio ever inflicted on someone else. It is the logical end of a pride that mistook itself for grace. Few novels commit this hard to watching a soul actually, irreversibly, damn itself.