Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
My rating: 3/5 cats
the person who was reading this used, 49 cent, copy of moll flanders before me stopped reading at page 26, judging by the abrupt cessation of circled words like “prattle,” “would you were, sir,” “brother fell,” and “he would.” i like to think about this person and their busy pen. it’s so arbitrary – they are not even words that might be unfamiliar to a moderately-literate reader. i tried to find a code in it: “help, i am being held hostage by a mad librarian,” but to no avail. almost every page has at least six circles or underlines and then suddenly – nothing. did the pen run out of ink? did they abandon moll flanders? did they fall out of a tree? it’s so mysterious. another thing that is mysterious is moll flanders. she swans through this book, dripping babies from her body like a tree sheds leaves, stealing and whoring and manipulating men to keep her head above water and yet i’m not in love with her. how can this be? i mean, it’s a fine book, but i can’t see falling in love with it or with her character. and honestly, i don’t know what to make of the realization that if she had just stayed married to her brother in the first place, she would have avoided a whole lot of trouble and had a lovely son and a fruitful plantation. let this be a lesson to you: choose wisely; incest or a life of crime. there is no in-between.
