The Case of Charles Dexter Ward
By H.P Lovecraft
About the author
The author of this book was born in 1890 and died in 1937. He has written a lot of horror, sci-fi and fantasy mixed literature. He has written mostly shorter stories, with The Case of Charles Dexter Ward being an exception. He is very well known in the horror genre and has left a lot of legacy behind him. Other authors like Stephen King and many more have gotten lots of inspiration from Howard Philips Lovecraft, which was his full name. However, it doesn’t stop with other authors; his work has been an inspiration to all sorts of things in popular culture, music, books, movies, video games etc. His stories are very different and the whole idea behind them is that mankind plays a very small part in an unknown universe. This has been called “Cosmic horror”.
Story
The book tells the story about a mental patient named Charles Dexter Ward. The story takes place in Rhode Island (America) and some towns around that area. In the beginning of the book he has just escaped from the mental institution without a trace. The book also involves some other characters like Charles doctor and his ancestor Joseph Curwen. This Joseph character plays a big role in the story. Part of the book only tells about Joseph Curwen. Charles has a very keen interest in Joseph; he had heard some strange things about him. So Charles starts to look into Joseph’s life and what he did when he was alive. There were a lot of rumors about him and the suspicious things he did. Most of the story about Charles himself is told through the eyes of his doctor, Willet. Charles seems to change and act more strange as the story progresses and a lot of it seems to do with his interest in his ancestor. So Willet wants to get to the bottom of this and find out what it is really about. Charles at first agrees to most of what Willet asks of him, but that change later on.
Charles lives at his parents’ home in the attic where he does his “science studies”. Later on he moves to a more private location at the countryside. At the same place Joseph used to live in fact and where horrible things happened according to history. Charles also seemed to have a partner in studies and experiments, named Dr.Allan. Little was known about this Allan person, you couldn’t even be sure he existed. He also knew some other strange persons all around the world. Charles was very secretive about almost everything around him. People were curious what he was up to and a lot of people wanted him gone at one point. They thought he was doing some sort of evil witchcraft. This was exactly how Joseph’s story was and Charles had become more and more like him. He even looked so very similar to his ancestor.
My opinions / thoughts
I like how the story was told in this book. It started out more slowly and later on things became more interesting. Just like a good story should be I think. Maybe a little too much was put into describing his character and it was often repeated. That’s really all the criticism I can think of. The ending was by far the best part of the book. I believe you have to like strange and unusual stories to enjoy this book, which I personally do. I would say it’s not your typical horror story, it’s actually quite unique, at least when you know that some other authors have borrowed stuff from his works. One of the best parts about the book (except the ending) is when Curwen’s story is described. The whole town goes against Curwen and wants to get rid of him for good. I also enjoyed the whole description about the old Curwen grounds. It was a house on the country side with catacombs beneath it. It’s pretty easy to picture it while you read.
Some parts of the book are easier to understand but some is quite hard actually. It’s a lot of older English and especially when letters are showed in the book. Luckily, everything isn’t as hard to understand.
I would recommend this book to anyone that is curious about how the horror genre in general and what was before Stephen King and others. Like I said in the beginning of my review, a lot of authors have taken inspiration from HP. Lovecraft. If you find horror cheesy you shouldn’t even try to read this though. I can understand why some people would find it silly. It can be a bit over the top sometimes. Still a solid book if the subject interests you. I would rate it a 4 out of 5. It’s not perfect but a pretty solid story.