What one reviewer said about The Black Cat and Other Stories (Penguin Reading Lab Level 3) by Edgar Allen Poe, Edgar Allan Poe:
Maybe this review would be bigger than the story itself. a simple idea and an unbelievable story. the story of our evil deeds hauting us. it is scary , but true. the most amazing thing in this story is Edgar Poe himself; his greatest use of the language, his realistic description of anger. he made me laugh many times , though it this short story is not intended to do that, because of his clever use of the vocabulary. it is a must read book. Dont think of missing it.
Begins:
FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburthen my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified - have tortured - have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but Horror - to many they will seem less terrible than _barroques_. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the common-place - some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
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