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The Phantom of the Opera (Bantam Classics) (Paperback)
by Gaston Leroux (Author), Lowell Bair (Translator)
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Literature, Fiction, Classic Horror |
| Market price: ¥ 78.00
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¥ 68.00
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MSL Pointer Review:
This is an excelent tale that has been made into many plays and movies. The mystery, suspense, and in parts, downright horror of this novel will make you never want to put it down.
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Author: Gaston Leroux (Author), Lowell Bair (Translator)
Publisher: Bantam Classics
Pub. in: January, 1990
ISBN: 0553213768
Pages: 288
Measurements: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00798
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0553213768
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- Awards & Credential -
The Phantom of the Opera is an enriching and emotionally exorcising tale that will never die no matter how many times it is re-told. |
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- MSL Picks -
"The story of the monster man whose horrible deformities cause fear and terror, his search for love and acceptance, and his haunting of the opera house in Paris is told in very simple language. Beautifully adapted, the story flows along so easily that readers will be immediately caught up in the tangle of events and emotions. McMullan conveys all of the anger, grief, joy, and love that make the phantom a truly believable character. Will attract reluctant readers."
(Quoting from The Publisher)
Target readers:
Gothic lovers, readers who like reading horror stories.
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Gaston Leroux, born on 6th May 1868, and trained as a lawyer on his father's instruction. He dreamed of becoming a writer however and, influenced by Dumas, Poe and Hugo. Leroux's life was eventful to say the least. When his father died leaving a considerable inheritance, Leroux managed to dispose of the whole sum in less than a year. He himself was a roving reporter and spend much time abroad in locations such as Sweden, Finland, Morocco, Egypt and even Korea. He wrote four novels and then decided to try to better Conan Doyle and Poe with his own mystery stories. So, Leroux became the author of a number of extremely popular detective novels, the most prominent of which were La Mystere de la Chambre Jaune ("The Mystery of the Yellow Room", 1907) and Le Parfum de la Dame en Noir. Their central and enduring character was the amateur detective known as Rouletabille for his bullet-shaped head. This man, Joseph Raul, is by trade a journalist and crime-reporter. Though still a young man he manages to use his powers of reasoning to solve mysteries while the police remain baffled - much in the vein of English authors G K Chesterton's Father Brown and, later, Agatha Christie's Miss Marple.
By 1909, Leroux was famous and successful enough to resign from journalism and spend all of his time writing. La Double Vie de Theophraste Longuet and La Reine du Sabbat are two of the author's famous horror stories produced during this period though he is now perhaps best known worldwide for his creation of the famous eponymous hero in The Phantom of the Opera (1910) that has been staged and filmed a number of times and remains a popular musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Leroux achieved a reasonable level of fame himself towards the end of his life, and he resided at his beautiful and final home, the "Palace of the North Star". He suffered, however, from illness on account of his obesity. On April 15, 1927 and at the age of 59 he died of an acute urinary infection.
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From Publishers Weekly
Gaston Leroux's famous gothic novel of intrigue and romance beneath the Paris Opera House has spawned a number of spinoffs; this storybook adaptation is not among the more felicitous. It tells, of course, of the beautiful opera singer Christine and the choice she must make between the disfigured Phantom, who taught her her craft, and the Viscount she has long loved. Leroux's is an intricate and complex story; here, it is given a summarized, reductive treatment. Characters and their motivations are scantily developed; the prose has a rushed, breathless quality that is overly melodramatic even for its subject; and, as presented, many specifics of the plot, as well as its eventual resolution and meaning, seem likely to leave children bewildered. The illustrations are stylized and garishly colored; they do not help to explicate the text nor do they make it inviting to the picture-book audience. No ages given.
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1.
Is It the Ghost? It was the evening on which MM. Debienne and Poligny, the managers of the Opera, were giving a last gala performance to mark their retirement. Suddenly the dressing-room of La Sorelli, one of the principal dancers, was invaded by half-a-dozen young ladies of the ballet, who had come up from the stage after “dancing” Polyeucte. They rushed in amid great confusion, some giving vent to forced and unnatural laughter, others to cries of terror. Sorelli, who wished to be alone for a moment to “run through” the speech which she was to make to the resigning managers, looked around angrily at the mad and tumultuous crowd. It was little Jammes - the girl with the tip-tilted nose, the forget-me-not eyes, the rose-red cheeks and the lily-white neck and shoulders - who gave the explanation in a trembling voice:
“It’s the ghost!” And she locked the door.
Sorelli’s dressing-room was fitted up with official, commonplace elegance. A pier-glass, a sofa, a dressing-table and a cupboard or two provided the necessary furniture. On the walls hung a few engravings, relics of the mother, who had known the glories of the old Opera in the Rue le Peletier; portraits of Vestris, Gardel, Dupont, Bigottini. But the room seemed a palace to the brats of the corps de ballet, who were lodged in common dressing-rooms where they spent their time singing, quarreling, smacking the dressers and hair-dressers and buying one another glasses of cassis, beer, or even rhum, until the callboy’s bell rang.
Sorelli was very suspicious. She shuddered when she heard little Jammes speak of the ghost, called her a “silly little fool” and then, as she was the first to believe in ghosts in general, and the Opera ghost in particular, at once asked for details:
“Have you seen him?”
“As plainly as I see you now!” said little Jammes, whose legs were giving way beneath her, and she dropped with a moan into a chair.
Thereupon little Giry - the girl with eyes black as sloes, hair black as ink, a swarthy complexion and a poor little skin stretched over poor little bones - little Giry added:
“If that’s the ghost, he’s very ugly!”
“Oh, yes!” cried the chorus of ballet-girls.
And they all began to talk together. The ghost had appeared to them in the shape of a gentleman in dress-clothes, who had suddenly stood before them in the passage, without their knowing where he came from. He seemed to have come straight through the wall.
“Pooh!” said one of them, who had more or less kept her head. “You see the ghost everywhere!”
And it was true. For several months, there had been nothing discussed at the Opera but this ghost in dress-clothes who stalked about the building, from top to bottom, like a shadow, who spoke to nobody, to whom nobody dared speak and who vanished as soon as he was seen, no one knowing how or where. As became a real ghost, he made no noise in walking. People began by laughing and making fun of this specter dressed like a man of fashion or an undertaker; but the ghost legend soon swelled to enormous proportions among the corps de ballet. All the girls pretended to have met this supernatural being more or less often. And those who laughed the loudest were not the most at ease. When he did not show himself, he betrayed his presence or his passing by accident, comic or serious, for which the general superstition held him responsible. Had any one met with a fall, or suffered a practical joke at the hands of one of the other girls, or lost a powderpuff, it was at once the fault of the ghost, of the Opera ghost.
After all, who had seen him? You meet so many men in dress-clothes at the Opera who are not ghosts. But this dress-suit had a peculiarity of its own. It covered a skeleton. At least, so the ballet-girls said. And, of course, it had a death’s head.
Was all this serious? The truth is that the idea of the skeleton came from the description of the ghost given by Joseph Buquet, the chief scene-shifter, who had really seen the ghost. He had run up against the ghost on the little staircase, by the footlights, which leads to “the cellars.” He had seen him for a second - for the ghost had fled - and to any one who cared to listen to him he said:
“He is extraordinarily thin and his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at. All the hair he has is three or four long dark locks on his forehead and behind his ears.”
This chief scene-shifter was a serious, sober, steady man, very slow at imagining things. His words were received with interest and amazement; and soon there were other people to say that they too had met a man in dress-clothes with a death’s head on his shoulders. Sensible men who had wind of the story began by saying that Joseph Buquet had been the victim of a joke played by one of his assistants. And then, one after the other, there came a series of incidents so curious and so inexplicable that the very shrewdest people began to feel uneasy.
For instance, a fireman is a brave fellow! He fears nothing, least of all fire! Well, the fireman in question, who had gone to make a round of inspection in the cellars and who, it seems, had ventured a little farther than usual, suddenly reappeared on the stage, pale, scared, trembling, with his eyes starting out of his head, and practically fainted in the arms of the proud mother of little Jammes.* And why? Because he had seen coming toward him, at the level of his head, but without a body attached to it, a head of fire! And, as I said, a fireman is not afraid of fire.
The fireman’s name was Pampin.
The corps de ballet was flung into consternation. At first sight, this fiery head in no way corresponded with Joseph Buquet’s description of the ghost. But the young ladies soon persuaded themselves that the ghost had several heads, which he changed about as he pleased. And, of course, they at once imagined that they were in the greatest danger. Once a fireman did not hesitate to faint, leaders and front-row and back-row girls alike had plenty of excuses for the fright that made them quicken their pace when passing some dark corner or ill-lighted corridor. Sorelli herself, on the day after the adventure of the fireman, placed a horse-shoe on the table in front of the stage-door-keeper’s box, which every one who entered the Opera otherwise than as a spectator must touch before setting foot on the first tread of the staircase. This horse-shoe was not invented by me - any more than any other part of this story, alas! - and may still be seen on the table in the passage outside the stage-door-keeper’s box, when you enter the Opera through the court known as the Cour de l’Administration.
To return to the evening in question.
“It’s the ghost!” little Jammes had cried.
An agonizing silence now reigned in the dressing-room. Nothing was heard but the hard breathing of the girls. At last, Jammes, flinging herself upon the farthest corner of the wall, with every mark of real terror on her face, whispered:
“Listen!”
*I have the anecdote, which is quite authentic, from M. Pedro Gailhard himself, the late manager of the Opera.
Everybody seemed to hear a rustling outside the door. There was no sound of footsteps. It was like light silk sliding over the panel. Then it stopped.
Sorelli tried to show more pluck than the others. She went up to the door and, in a quavering voice, asked:
“Who’s there?”
But nobody answered. Then feeling all eyes upon her, watching her last movement, she made an effort to show courage, and said very loudly:
“Is there any one behind the door?”
“Oh, yes, yes! Of course there is!” cried that little dried plum of a Meg Giry, heroically holding Sorelli back by her gauze skirt. “Whatever you do, don’t open the door! Oh, Lord, don’t open the door!”
But Sorelli, armed with a dagger that never left her, turned the key and drew back the door, while the ballet-girls retreated to the inner dressing-room and Meg Giry sighed:
“Mother! Mother!”
Sorelli looked into the passage bravely. It was empty; a gas-flame, in its glass prison, cast a red and suspicious light into the surrounding darkness, without succeeding in dispelling it. And the dancer slammed the door again, with a deep sigh.
“No,” she said, “there is no one there.”
“Still, we saw him!” Jammes declared, returning with timid little steps to her place beside Sorelli. “He must be somewhere prowling about. I shan’t go back to dress. We had better all go down to the foyer together, at once, for the ‘speech,’ and we will come up again together.”
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Darmandzhyan (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
French is a beautiful and romantic language and English translations of the Phantom of the Opera haven't always come through quite as beautifully and often times they sound military. This translation flows very well. I was very surprised when I found it. I had read about three or four versions of the book in English from different translators when I stumbled onto this one by accident at the local library. I prefer books in hardcover and searched for this translation in that format but was not able to find it. Now, I have only one classic French book in paperback. This is really the best translation of this book. It flows easily although not as perfectly as the French does. Who knew Bantam could pull this off successfully?
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
What I enjoyed most about this book was the simplicity of language and the direct truth of human needs. Erik was physically deformed and sickly. Mostly, he was unloved and cast out from society; he was bigger than just the Opera Ghost. He was society's shame -- a shame they felt that should be hidden and not acknowledged (either out of fear or because of it... you choose). That lack of positive acknowledgement is what makes this book so sad and frustrating. He had love to give, but it was not wanted; he was deemed a creature of horror. But it was really the general attitude of society that was the horror - not him. The book really echoes the truth that it is what is on the inside that matters, for that is what lasts the longest, and that people should be more open-minded to the mental and physical flaws that either God or Nature or both created. Erik is a symbol not of darkness and the gothic motif, but of light and life and living. If anyone liked this book, they should read Susan Kay's Phantom; it is a good precursor to Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera.
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A reader (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
Raoul knew the was something fishy about a voice behind Christine's dressing room door, especialy when he went inside her dressing room right after she left and there was no one there, but he didn't expect that it could be a Phantom. The Phantom lives under the opera, for he fears others seeing his deformed face, but he falls in love with one Christine Daae after giving her singing lessons, which hightens her status at the opera. Yet, Raoul is in love with the prima dona as well; Christine has a choice. You will not be able to put this book, which describes everything in large detail, down one second, as you follow the gripping tale of The Phantom of the Opera. Leroux brings out his characters' personalities in a such a way that the whole story is believeable. This book could make a GREAT movie if they stayed close to the book, so that means that you ought to read this very very good book.
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Aethelflad (MSL quote), USA
<2007-03-12 00:00>
I started reading The Phantom of the Opera last night and finished this afternoon. Having seen the recently-released film first, then having followed up by listening to a recording of Webber's famous musical adaptation, I was curious to read the text that had inspired the film and the music I enjoyed so much. The book was an absolute page-turner.
Erik's character is among the most simultaneously compelling and horrifying ones I've read. I love the way Leroux does not treat him as a mere boogie-man, but gives the readers multiple insights to a complex personality. I found myself amused at the Phantom's practical jokes and ingenuity (such as the banknote affair and Carlotta's unfortunate croaking performance), horrified at his vengeance, impressed by his mastery over the secrets of the opera house, and softened by his slavish love for Christine. Should I be repulsed by his evil deeds and dark past or moved to pity? Erik's character is truly one larger than life.
Raoul's character was really my only disappointment. I could not bring myself to like or empathize with him at all and liked Christine less for returning his love. He came across as a spoiled brat who had never been denied anything in his life and cannot comprehend why Christine doesn't throw herself at him whenever he snaps his fingers. He insults Christine cruelly in fits of jealousy and is scarcely less obsessive than the Phantom, but in a sniveling, childish manner. I also hated his refusal consider the Phantom's plight as described by Christine, never allowing pity to soften his desire to kill Erik out of pure jealousy (and he does, indeed, take a gunshot at him when given the chance). It is obvious that the Phantom could have killed Raoul in a heartbeat once within the opera house, but he displays amazing self-restraint when it comes to his rival, especially given his seemingly super-human capabilities.
I would recommend this book to anyone, "Phans" and those with no prior exposure to the story. Perhaps it is not top-notch literature, but a very entertaining book nonetheless. It is an intriguing read with incredible characters, a book difficult to put down and a story difficult to forget!
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