Phantom
by Susan Kay

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Book Reviews of Phantom

Book Review: What?
Summary: 2 Stars

On the positive side, having not read the Leroux novel beyond the first few chapters (and Kay's effort singularly defeats the original in terms of scope and readability), a number of confusing items were summarily cleared up for me. The lake under the Opera House, the manner of the Phantom's salary and his extravangant sense of dress all make sense! The Phantom's pyrotechnic tricks, Carlotta's stage croaks, and the mystery of the noises from Box Five are also summarily treated, turned from supernatural to singularly amusing deceptions. On a side note, Raoul's character is delightfully hateful and is the only narrative point of view which is not only uniquely voiced but uniquely carried; it's a shame that his part was so useless.

On the other hand, the book's failures are grievously exacerbated by the potential this book had. One of Andrew Lloyd Weber's successes with his musical Phantom were the quirks and peculiarities of the bit characters; Carlotta's aggravation toward the fawning advances of her admirers, the new management's exasperation at the initially benign antics of the Phantom. Kay drops a number of the amusing and revealing interchanges between the characters, even when they were potentially recordable through Christine's journal, and trivializes more. For instance, Carlotta's confrontation with Christine on the stage was, in Kay's interpretation, unprovoked (other than, of course, for Carlotta's crime of being Carlotta!).
A lot of good opportunities were missed. Furthermore, the novel continually mismatched clumsy and extravagant melodrama in the narrative with comparatively terse and clipped dialogue. The Phantom's fleeting jealousy over Christine's shawl was grossly mishandled, and comes across as juvenile. Also, Kay's insistence on using ... <-- periods to emote suspense and indecision in her characters grew tiresome by about page 10.

In my opinion, the book curled up and died when Christine, after the Phantom flies into a rage and terrifies her into her prepared room in his chamber, hears him playing his masterwork Don Juan; and, rather than finding it disturbing and strange, it thrills her into a sexual frenzy, and she masturbates (for the first time?). Kay's strained narrative finally breaks here, and the scene carries along in a jangling fashion, alternating between scrupulously descriptive and laboriously veiled ('a place I had never known existed...', and detours through an appalling number of cliches along the way. The book's already wavering credibility does not recover after this death blow, and reading the rest of the book became merely an exercise in completion.

Summary of Phantom

Literature & Fiction Books

• Subjects > Literature & Fiction