Review of 'The listing attic [and] The unstrung harp' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
A collection of dark and grim limericks. With Limericks you can use the rhyming to describe something nasty and you don't realise how messed up it is until the last work. Gorey was very good at doing that and a number of times I finished the rhyme and then figured out it was about a dead child or dismembered woman. The illustrations are fantastic, you can spend longer looking at each image than you do on reading the limerick. A few examples for ya.
Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits on the foot of my bed;
I'd not mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks,
But for Seventeen years he's been dead
There was a young curate whose brain
Was deranged from the use of cocaine;
He lured a small child
To a copse dark and wild,
Where he beat it to death with his …
A collection of dark and grim limericks. With Limericks you can use the rhyming to describe something nasty and you don't realise how messed up it is until the last work. Gorey was very good at doing that and a number of times I finished the rhyme and then figured out it was about a dead child or dismembered woman. The illustrations are fantastic, you can spend longer looking at each image than you do on reading the limerick. A few examples for ya.
Each night Father fills me with dread
When he sits on the foot of my bed;
I'd not mind that he speaks
In gibbers and squeaks,
But for Seventeen years he's been dead
There was a young curate whose brain
Was deranged from the use of cocaine;
He lured a small child
To a copse dark and wild,
Where he beat it to death with his cane.
