The Fall

The atmosphere is creepy, but not graphic. You know something else is going on, but can't quite put your finger on it. It seems like it would be easy to hate Madeline and see her as weak and whiny. However, the way she is portrayed in this book makes her lovable, likable, and even strong. For a book over 400 pages, this is a quick read and very enjoyable.

This was deliciously spooky and atmospheric. The house is itself a character just as in Poe's story. The narrative jumping around in a nonlinear way felt natural and like I was piecing together a puzzle. The chapter headings all being “Madeline is [age]” made it feel like I was reading flashbacks that Madeline was having. And I really like the level of agency Madeline has compared to in the original. She is still very constrained by both the evil of the house and the predatory doctors, but figures out ways to exhibit her own will anyway.

The incestuous implications in Poe's story are made more explicit in this book, and always with the characters feeling horror and revulsion. There is a clearer allegory where the physical state of the house represents the Usher family's implied consanguinity. When twin siblings Madeline and Roderick are the only remaining Ushers alive, and Roderick is implied to have no interest in women (he and Noah are strongly implied to have been lovers while at school), the house itself tries to compel them to have an incestuous relationship—it felt very much like an allegory for noble families' marriages being based around keeping their wealth and property in the family.

[hypothesis]
By coincidence I had been reading about the health problems and traits in the Habsburg dynasty that are believed to have come about from their high level of consanguinity, and that likely primed me to think of the Usher family illness as akin to those health problems. The house's evil magic rather than pure genetics is the cause of the Usher illness, but it is attracted to Usher family blood, and seems to correlate with consanguinity. Women from outside the Usher family can get the illness from marrying into the family, so this isn't an interpretation without problems. But I still like to imagine the mechanics of fantasy processes.
[/hypothesis]