The Loathsome Couple

by Edward Gorey

Book Overview

Perhaps its author's most unpleasant book ever. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0396073794
• ISBN13: 9780396073796
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Dodd Mead
• Length: 64 Pages
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Possibly Gorey's most elegantly structured book

Edward Gorey's THE LOATHSOME COUPLE is one of his usual stories consisting of pen-and-ink drawings and amusing captions. The thirty-one pages of the book tell the story of Harold Snodleigh and Mona Gritch, two thoroughly repugnant people who fall in love and discover that their "life's work" is murdering children. While set in the unspecified Victorian or Edwardian era common to most of Gorey's oeuvre, the book is heavily inspired by the Moors Murders that rocked 1960s England. In spite of its subject matter, or rather because of Gorey's treatment of it, this is an exceedingly funny book. Gorey was a master of macabre, grim, droll humour, and THE LOATHSOME COUPLE is his finest achievement in this vein. Because Gorey's books are so concise, one cannot say much about the plot without giving it all away, I can only give effusive praise. While all of Edward Gorey's books are immediately entertaining, this one rewards repeat reading. The elegant symmetry of its storytelling, the wit of its text--all of which are in the most perfect harmony with their accompanying drawings--the use of internal allusion, all of these make THE LOATHSOME COUPLE my favourite of all of Gorey's works. Along with THE BLUE ASPIC (a similarly macabre story) and THE OTHER STATUE (Gorey at his most idiosyncratic), this is one book I would recommend to anyone curious about the work of this widely-acclaimed but perpetually underappreciated literary figure and artist.

Hard Core Gorey

The caption, "Harold Snedleigh was found beating a sick small animal to death with a rock when he was five years old," begins what truly, as the book cover states, is "...its author's most unpleasant ever." It is a truly disturbing book, on a horrible topic (the eponymous Harold Snedleigh and his almost-lover Mona Gritch murder children as "their life's work"). Clearly the work of a psychopathic and disturbed mind.Or is it? Coming from Edward Gorey, we realize the satire immediately. But I pity those who have come across this treasure without ever having consumed a Gorey before, for it would be the rare individual indeed who would ever buy another of his works. This is a work for the true Goreyphile: aware that his dark streak has an outlet in brilliant satiric writing inextricably coupled to magnificent and meticulous pen-and-inks (darker than is typical of Gorey).Some of the prose in this obscure little book is so memorable that it cannot be anything other than true genius. Ditto for the illustrations: poor little Eepie Carpetrod, the loathsome couple's first victim, in incredibly cute in that way that only Gorey can draw a child; as cute as Harold and Mona are repellent. "They spent the better part of the night murdering the child in various ways."Lacking Gorey's talent, it will forever be a mystery to me how a mind that can create cute little Eepie can also create the horror that is the subject of this book. For it is a true horror book, despite the satire. It is also a repudiation that horror need be explicit, for it is as explicitly horrifying as Gorey's masterpiece The Curious Sofa is explicitly pornographic.