This is such a great fun book to read. It's really not like anything else at all, it's so extreme in every way. It was written in the era of the great classics, but this one is never going to be taught in schools. The book out-Gothics all the Gothic novels you ever read, Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey isn't even related to the raw perversion and criminality of this madcap horror ride through the forbidden where taboos fall one by one as the The Monk, unable to live up to his vows gives in to every deviant temptation. In him, every tenet of pure, celibate monastic existence becomes corrupted and evil. The Monk has everything - a cross-dressing seductive heroine, get thee to a nunnery oh you virgin (but not for long), sex, incest, rape, madness, torture, death, crypts, poison, magic, ghosts, bandits, vermin, the devil and the total moral and social degradation of all concerned. The author, who was only 20 at the time, let his fevered imagination run as wild as it wanted and then whipped it on a bit further. The most perverted and extreme taboos were just eccentricities to be worked into the characters and plot. What makes the book so outstanding, and why it has never been out of print in the over 200 years since it was first published, is that it is written with great intelligence and insight into people's psyches by an extremely talented author. And, unlike some classics, it isn't in the least bit boring.