I enjoyed the story although at times the digressions were annoying. Very well written though and at times over written. ( )

The gloomy mansion stood for hundreds of years in its small New England toen, Sheltering generations of the sane unhappy family. Then Phoebe, the youngest member, comes to stay and bring happiness to the family at last.

The story is about womn is live in old house was built colonel pyncheon. I don't like story because boring

The house of the gables was built by colonel pynchon but the same day he finished the house he died in his chair.was this because of a wizards curse?

The house of the seven gables was built by person, but the same day he finished the house he died in his chair. ( )

The House of Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne’s gothic tale is a study in original sin, moral corruption, and redemption. Several generations of the Pyncheon family are cursed by an ancestor’s obsession with wealth and power. Each new generation falls into a common pattern of greed and manipulation, bankrupt of the redeeming qualities of love and humility. Redemption is won when a few simple and pure members of the family overcome the baser urges of their kin, banding together to care for one another.

This is not a book to speed through. There are no quick characterizations. There is no rollercoaster plot. Hawthorne’s prose, while dense and slow, is rich and absorbing. He meticulously designs his characters, sometimes pausing for whole chapters to pore over one person’s thoughts and feelings. The resulting experience is engrossing, with the dark mood of the story folded into every line.

Bottom line: An absorbing and moody read, rich in meticulous detail and ( )

Some thoughts...

This narrative, published in 1850, starts with a preface by Hawthone explaining his concept of the Romance, which is to be distinguished from the Novel because it provides the writer with greater latitude to takes risks. The Novel is somehow more straightforward, more conservative, less flexible as a vehicle for experimentation.

The first chapter gives us the backstory in a kind of lump sum. Most contemporary novelists probably write such a backstory but often cut it, since, lacking action and character, it can seem too schematic and impersonal. Hawthorne's backstory is perhaps no exception. But, it has the virtue of being 160 years old, and that, combined with its antiquated vocabulary, deftly wielded, combines to hook the reader. The backstory spills all the beans of this fantastic narrative, including the heinous crime, the resulting curse, the astonishing event at the housewarming--and the collective guilt that is said to course through each suceeding generation of the Pyncheon family.

When we reach the action of the present day, it's a particularly low moment in the Pyncheon family's fortunes. Hepzibah, the permanently scowling seemingly sole survivor of the line, is forced to open what was at the time known as a "cent shop" in a corner of the grand though decaying house. There's nerve-wracking suspense here. Hawthorne seems to wring it from every word. His mode of storytelling is simultaneously achingly and beautifully slow. There's one scene, for example, in which he lingers over a simple breakfast. Each item seems lovingly revealed; there's a sumptuousness to the language that seems to belie the meal's simplicity. The gaze throughout smacks of the voyeuristic; as if the dead, who are no longer permitted such pleasures, were narrating.

The narrative is marked by a number of oppositions in terms of imagery: gloom and sunshine, animal and spiritual, age and youth, ugliness and beauty, exhaustion and vitality. Clifford embodies many of these. He is put forth as the spoiled and decadent figure and symbol of the family's fortunes. He is obviously homosexual, something Hawthorne, working in the era he did, could only vaguely touch upon. Yet in the end he is mindful enough to turns this cliché on its head. For Clifford, it turns out, is not the "symbol" of the decaying family, but an individual, just one, from whose shoulders at the end of the book all unfair connotation seems justly lifted.

Clifford has an artist's sensibility without the artistry. He is a dilettante. The Daguerrotypist, how lives beneath one of the House's gables, is referred to as "the artist." The contrast is intentional. The fellow with the so-called artistic sensibilities is not an artist at all, but one who makes his living from a simple mechanical process. Clifford, by contrast, lives for beauty. It infuses his every happy moment. Without it he is corpse-like, almost inert.

I will revise and expand on these thoughts once I've had a chance to reread the Novel.