Never in my life have I chanced upon an unauthorized "sequel" to a classic (cult classic is more appropriate in this case, perhaps) that insults the original within the first five sentences. That is impressive! And it continues, page after page, scoffing at Leroux's original novel and pointing out how unremarkable it was for most of his life, arguing the most inane points against it that seem to miss the point of dramatic effect entirely. Claiming something is true in a work of fiction is a literary device, yes, but it does not, to my mind, restrict the author to pure realism. His complaints are as inane as they are nitpicking as they are strange! Is this book seriously going there? The sheer ego! Not only that, but it continues on with some bizarre and excessive Andrew Lloyd Webber ass-kissing that holds him up as the only man to ever truly "understand" the important parts of the story, better by far than that gross old Leroux who invented the damn characters! But here, while some of the poorer choices of Love Never Dies can’t be blamed on The Phantom of Manhatten, it’s still pretty much the same idea, with the same silly twist, and the same desire to ruin the impact of the original’s ending by insisting that it was merely a road block, not the cap to a tragic character’s development. Basically, if either of these things disturb you: 1) Erik plays the stock exchange to great success because why not. 2) Erik becomes obscenely wealthy while at the same time dressing up like a clown to keep a ‘low profile.’ 3) Jesus makes an appearance! …Well, then you probably don’t want to put yourself through it. The first problem is that the story is told from several different perspectives, but hardly any of them are people relevant to the storyline. They are very firmly outsiders looking in, random passers by who happen to find themselves very briefly involved in the larger story. It serves the purpose of keeping us constantly at a distance, except for rare moments where one of the original characters resumes narration. Much of the novel is so repetitive and irrelevant that I found myself skimming. Why so much focus on period-specific name-dropping and superfluous background details of these random narrators? Why is the story being told through these utterly incidental people? It keeps the story from ever entering into emotional territory and who the heck wants that from a PHANTOM OF THE OPERA story?tThe prose itself is—I don’t want to be cruel, but I can’t think of a better word than ‘amateurish.’ There’s no interesting use of language, not enough diversity in narrator voices to justify having so many, and the dialogue is flat as a line and fails to reflect how actual people talk, especially when emotional. It’s boring; there’s nothing about the prose that intrigues or urges on, and sentences don’t so much flow as they do sit on the page. I find it necessary to note that the first thing that Erik notes about Christine after meeting her again after so many years is her ‘tiny waist.’ He goes on to exalt her physical beauty, saying NOTHING of her voice, not even a brief mention of his anticipation to hear her sing again. During their confrontation, it is Christine who has to remind him that she will sing for him again. This immediately just rubs me the wrong way, because one of the more unique elements of the original is that the Phantom doesn’t fall for Christine because of her physical looks, but because of her raw talent. Something they have in common, a shared passion! It’s a problem that reflects the larger problem of the novel: their relationship is devoid of depth or charisma or intensity, unlike in the original novel and the musical. Erik is a muted version of his former self. There are references to his pain and anger, but very little intensity to the prose that contains them. No sense of the macabre surrounds him as he peers down at New York from the top of his skyscraper. When this Erik says, “I wanted to kill them,” I don’t believe he’d actually go through with it. There are no lines like “the angels wept tonight” to be found here, and the lack of poetry in him is rather startling when one considers what a sweepingly creative romantic he was in the original. Despite also being a murdering, stalking, damaged-beyond-repair psychopath. (This novel forgets he’s a murderer; at least Christine does).Christine? Forget about her. All you’ll know about her is how attractive she is. I think, too, that a major mistake is made in separating any Phantom story from its musical roots. The novel’s setting is the Paris opera house, and the Phantom and Christine’s relationship is formed over music. So too is Christine and Raoul’s. In the musical, everything is actually told through song. In this… Well, the Phantom eventually builds an opera house. He lures Christine across the ocean with a new opera he’s written. But we don’t join him in composing, we only hear of the opera second-hand (several newspaper articles by different people are written in the same bizarrely twee voice that feels the need to remind American readers who their president is, and also how “immediately” relevant the civil war is to Americans 40 years after its conclusion), and the overall story is just not about music.The one theatre scene we get is a redressed copy of Lloyd Webber’ s Past The Point Of No Return sequence, sans the tension or interesting conclusion. Music is incidental, and seems to be involved in the plot only because it’s impossible to separate the Phantom mythos from music. There’s no interest in artistry or creativity, and this is only highlighted by the Phantom’s new occupation as a businessman, the head of his own corporation. tAnd that’s maybe an apt description for the whole thing. It feels like a corporate cash-in, and not anything written out of a genuine creative spark. Certainly, it’s nothing that understands the rush of creative expression, of the splendour and romance and mystery of the operas that inspire the original Erik and Christine. tTo me, the Phantom story doesn’t work as a straight romance. It needs the Gothic aesthetic, the horror elements, the mystery, the spectacle, the ghost story! Phantom in Manhatten is just the two-old-lovers-come-back-together-again narrative. It seems to me that the novel’s greatest crime isn’t in flagrantly insulting the text it owes its existence to, nor in soapy plot twists, nor in the stilted prose; it is that this is a novel based on The Phantom Of The Opera, and there is not one element, not one line, not one character moment that has a single drop of passion in it at all.tFor all their flaws, the original and the musical cannot be called passionless. This, on the other hand, is utterly hollow. SPOILERS FOR THE ENDINGtThe ending of this book is especially horrendous. Christine’s conclusion is perfectly random and utterly emotionless. Raoul accepts it without sparing a second for grief or tears and acts with the rational, cool mind of a man who has just seen a fly squashed by an irritable tourist. He also has no real reaction to seeing Erik again--AT ALL! It happens, is over and accepted so quickly that it gave me whiplash. Erik, too, is not even given a LINE, and does not utter a word in response to her sudden, violent death. The idea of forcing a thirteen year old child who has just witnessed his mother shot and killed to choose between his father and the man he has just been told is his REAL father is absolutely absurd and cruel. That he would pick Erik, a physically deformed stranger, is even more bizarre. The ending is completely devoid of any understanding of human emotion and psychology that it’s easily the worst part of the novel. And what that… I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Love Never Dies is better!
I am very happy this took so little time to read, because I found myself unsatisfied immensely. It criticises Gaston Leurox (mind you, this is the man who wrote the original?) on his story's legitimacy. I thoroughly believe this is all to make the author of this novel seem smarter. The book was a boring monologue. I read it on a tablet, and wasn't watching the page numbers, only presuming something huge was about to happen. I was anticipating the great climax when I checked which page I was on, only to find it was page 131/140. At this point I really wasn't happy. I had hoped the this book would outshine Love Never DIes. But as a matter of fact it has made me have some resepct to ALW for not adapting this thing word for word.And also, there was no real war in the Balkans in 1906. It was a trade war, and I can't imagine there as that many souls lost over a couple of pigs during the Svjinski Rat, thanks. As for Chrsitine and Erik , there is not tension, no emotion, nothing we have once known. It is like they are reading from a script rather than actually feeling. We don't even get a chapter dedicated to Christines view - despite her being, well, THE FEMALE PROTAGONIST - and only two are given to Erik, the title character- who is now a money loving, boring, monotonous genius. Great. Out of such masterpiece comes this rubbish.And Raoul, oh poor Raoul...what did he do to deserve that?! I mean, there is hatred, and then there is that. I hate Raoul, personally, in every form of POTO. But I swear Raoul's past in this story made me laugh in disturbance. Let's not even talk about the other characters.I feel I am being a little to harsh, but I'm very into writing myself and I'm an addictive reader - as well as a hard core POTO fan. I read this because I was looking for something, anything to fuel my addiction. It's easy to pick out the flaws - the monotone, anticlimax, lack of any character development for well.. anyone except for Mr. Bloom, who I actually liked because of his talkative manner. I understand that Phantom Of the Opera is very easy to make a mess of and hard to make a fanfiction for - take it from someone who has nightmares of people criticising her POTO fanfics. One star for the cover.Another for the fact that he tried.
What do You think about The Phantom Of Manhattan (2000)?
A book that would have been readable had it not tried to be a sequel to Phantom of the Opera; a book that would have been readable had it not been for the arrogant, conceited preface in which the author has the gall to insist that Gaston Leroux did not understand his own characters and that Andrew Lloyd Webber corrected these errors. The preface is truly the only remarkable prose in this novel as it is completely unnecessary and is riddled with fallacies in logic in the author's attempts to justify the novel's existence, and ultimately can be described in a few short words as making a big stink about nothing. With the high expectations the author demands from the book in mind, one marvels at how mediocre the story is, how ignorant, crude, and beyond salvation the characterization is; and how forced, clumsy, and tasteless the historical allusions are. It is my belief that just because a story is written doesn't mean it should ever be published, and this is a perfect example. Its only saving grace is its length: it's a short, slim volume that can serve in myriad of useful functions after reading such as an expensive drink coaster, a prop to fix wiggly tables, door stop, etc.Incidentally, as of 2007, I am sad to report that Andrew Lloyd Webber's ego was so effectively inflated by Forsythe's toadying in the preface that a musical based on the novel's premise is now on its way to West End.
—Lindsay
The plus side of this book is that it's terribly short, so if you do feel a need to read this then it won't take too much of your time. The positives pretty much end there. I knew that POM has not been well received in the Phan community before I picked this up, but I adored Love Never Dies so much that I wanted to give this a go. Unfortunately, the charm and passion from LND is nowhere to be found, and instead replaced with horrible pacing, predictable story and lackluster writing. The fact that Forsyth writes so negatively about Leroux's original novel also irks me. According to him Leroux's piece is a good try but not good quality wise. Rubbish!Since this book is considered a sequel to ALW's original musical I was very disappointed to see what felt like a majority of it dedicated to new characters and very little to Eric, Christine or even Raoul. I watched an interview with ALW once where he said he was having difficulties creating what would come to be known as Love Never Dies until someone pointed out to him that he introduced too many new characters. Since ALW and Forsyth collaborated in the beginning I am grateful that ALW ended up parting ways.I will say that if Forsyth's goal was to offer an outsider's observation of the events of Christine's time in America then he made a good attempt but the story's quality is not good, and here lies the irony in his bashing of Leroux's work. If the story was fleshed out and actually read as a true novel and not as a summary then perhaps the new characters would add a richness to it that would make it bearable. If he actually delved into Eric and Christine's psyche half the amount he did with the assistant, reporter or priest (the three new main characters) then just maybe the events in this book would be justified and make much more sense. Unfortunately, Forsyth, a man who called Leroux's piece a "slim little book", gives us barely 177 pages (although, it reads like roughly 100) of a story that has little to do with the characters that so many know and love and even less to do with Leroux's great work. Perhaps if Forsyth replaced the names of Eric, Christine and all the other original characters with his own creation then this book would be a decent read, but he did not and instead chose to publish this as "The continuation of the timeless classic The Phantom of the Opera.
—Colee B
As the book was out-of-print, I read this on my Kindle (which I hardly ever do). Forsyth prefaces his novel with an analysis of Leroux's "The Phantom of the Opera" (which serves as the prequel to Forsyth's story). The analysis provides both a critical perspective on Leroux's text as well as an explanation for the rationale behind Forsyth's novel. It is worth the read.As to the novel itself, it presents a somewhat unique narration in that the narrator changes from chapter to chapter. This technique creates an experience where one becomes an observer to all of the events contained within the novel and one begins playing detective insofar as one begins trying to piece together the seemingly separate narratives to form a cohesive story wherein all the details are revealed.I enjoyed what Forsyth did with the characters; rather than simply recycling them from Leroux's (or, more accurately, Lloyd Webber's) story, Forsyth forces them to grow and evolve. No one begins the story where he or she ended the previous tale; they have all changed in meaningful ways during the interim.Having seen Lloyd Webber's "Love Never Dies" (the Phantom sequel that, as of this writing, has yet to arrive on Broadway), I must say I enjoy Forsyth's ending much more than Lloyd Webber's. Perhaps it's because I have a certain nostalgia for certain characters or because I thought the character arcs were more believable in Forsyth's version, but the ending of "Love Never Dies" disappointed while the ending of "The Phantom of Manhattan" was much more palatable.
—Eric
