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Customer Reviews of PHANTOM

My all-time favorite book - BEAUTIFUL!
I myself just had to confirm that 99.9% of the previous reviews on this brilliant novel were absolutely dead-on correct. PHANTOM is a beautifully written, well-researched, highly intelligent, passionate, emotional insight into Erik's enigmatic life well before the familiar story. The different perspectives of the key people in Erik's life (including himself) are all eloquent as well as informative, with perfectly timed moments of humor weaved throughout. While many and most of the story's previously written versions portray Erik to be a cold-blooded monster who hunts to kill for no just cause, this book shows him merely as a lost, tormented, highly sensitive and brilliantly precocious genius. He is nothing less than human, with all the frailities and needs and desires that we all crave. You can't help but fall in love with Erik, from his spirit-damaging childhood and his terrible young life afterward, to a grown man searching for meaning and acceptance in a world which has shunned him merely because of his appearance. His path to the Paris Opera House is laced with tragedy, but you can still see the innate good deep within him even as he falters repeatedly. His resilience is tested only by his passionate love for beauty and perfection, but he proves his remarkable understanding for what is most important in life at various intervals throughout the book. This is an incredible book, a chance to see and understand the real story, a time to really get to know Erik on so many levels and experience all that he has endured, and subsequently to love him as if he were a very real person. And though he possesses unmatched genius, numerous gifts and unbelievable passions, we see a real man, a living, breathing, feeling, beautiful man who is not quite so different from the rest of us.

And though a couple of people who reviewed this book conveyed their disapproval of the book's ending, I seriously loved it. There's a very witty, unexpected twist which leaves you with a sense of relief, and not to mention how it shows a more likable, respectful Raoul who isn't too proud to accept a final responsibility he had never bargained for in the first place.

I've read this book well over 100 times, each time noticing something new and different, and each time noticing one constant: the never-changing theme is love, acceptance, the beauty of the human soul, and that sometimes our most outrageous dreams/fantasies will come true, even if only for a while. This book will suck you in and never let you go and even if you tried, you could never forget it's profound insight on life and love.

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Breathtaking... amazing...heartbreaking!
I simply cannot imagine the story of the Phantom having happened any other way after reading this novel! Susan Kay is brilliant. Erik comes alive in her text, more human than ever before. The author's imagination is stunning; the re-creation of Erik's life prior to and through the main body of events at the Paris Opera is so believable you lose your heart to the Phantom at the first page. The portrayal of Erik's life in Persia is especially outstanding. Kay's imagery of the Persian makes him no longer a mystery. Given a name and life and true experiences that bond him as a friend to Erik, her Nadir is more than the shadowy sketch given by Leroux. Heartrending are the last two sections of the book, where Erik falls in love with Christine and their relationship is poignantly told-- and Raoul ends the narrations for good. Christine comes across beautifully, and Susan Kay shows the relationship between Erik and the young woman very intimately. Her ending is sure to leave the reader in tears; the twist she creates is perfection... what some of us wish could have been. Unforgettable; very literally read it and weep

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so wonderful and PHANTASTIC!!
Wow! I just finished the book for the second time in 4 days and it made me cry everytime. I checked out this book at the library and started crying in front of everone as I read a little of the first section! It takes alot for me to cry over a book in front of strangers, mind you. This book is now my favorite (more than lernox's PHANTOM or Les Miserables). I was on my way to appply for a job (im 14) and I was reading it in the car but when I was filling out a job applacation, I started crying!!! From his mother refusing him a single kiss to his morphine and opium addiction to his death, he (Erik) kept me under his spell and begged me to read onward. I know that sounds lame, but it felt like Erik was speaking through the pages and begging me to read onward. This is such a great PHANTASTIC book!!! Read it and cry, not for my review, but for our beloved Phantom, Erik.