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The Fall of the House of Usher (Paperback, 2001, Pearson ESL) 4 stars

Not my favourite of Poe's stories

3 stars

[this review is about the title story only] I was surprised by how short this story was. The way I hear it talked about kind of gives it the status of a novel in my mind, and it's really just a sketch, almost a single scene. Which is a format Poe absolutely excelled at--I think his best stories are so effective precisely because they're so tightly focussed and written--but somehow this one felt too skeletal to me. Which makes it a perfect choice for Ursula Vernon to have built books.theunseen.city/book/194634/s/what-moves-the-dead around, but not a story I found very satisfying in its original form.