Literary Crushes
Day 8. I’ll be posting one a day for the next ten days–a list of my top ten completely platonic and not in any way obsessive literary crushes. Here follow my all-time favorite cerebral, brooding, and sometimes tragic heroes in my very favorite books about them.
Erik. The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. Neither the musical nor the multiple film versions do Erik adequate justice. A musical and mathematical genius, the disfigured misfit grew up loathed and hated, so it comes as no surprise that he once devised hidden chambers and labyrinths of torture in his youth. After taking up residence in the subterranean levels of the Paris Opera House, Erik seeks to woo Christine, a young chorus girl, through a vocal and psychological courtship never again to be equaled. Erik will kidnap, sabotage, and murder, but only for love, beauty, and that most ephemeral of feelings, simple human kindness.
Key points: labyrinth, misunderstood, romance, child genius, music, psychology, crime
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