The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner by James Hogg (1824)

A mysterious figure leads a young Scottish man to commit a serious of heinous acts.

Book Review:  The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner is the kind of book found on a high shelf, hidden by shadow, in a used-book store on a back street of a small town north of Edinburgh. Published anonymously by James Hogg in 1824, largely set in the first decade of the 18th century, it involves a young man who learns that he is one of the "elect," that he is saved no matter his actions. His story is told twice, by two unreliable narrators, the first an "objective third person" Editor, and the other by the young man himself. It is a tale of religion, murder, 18th century Scotland, psychology, doppelganger, and the supernatural. If those words sound interesting, you'll probably like Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. Poe is the most similar author I could think of (and their lives overlapped). To be fair, although I enjoyed the book and was never a danger of quitting, it wasn't quite the fast and exciting read it may sound. There are number of archaisms (that 1824 thing), which slowed me down at times, and bits of the book are in Scottish dialect, which wasn't usually difficult, but there was the occasional word for which I had no clue, despite my upbringing. My edition had a Scottish glossary in the back, but it could have been three times longer for me. It also had helpful explanatory notes in the back, keyed to pages, but not footnoted in the text. Private Memoirs and Confessions includes numerous conversations about Calvinism, which I was unfamiliar with (tho I learned a lot), but I'm guessing was much more widely known at the time and place the book was written. My edition (Canongate, Edinburgh, 2008) also had a preface by Ian Rankin, an Introduction by David Groves, and an Afterword by Andre Gide (apparently from 1947) -- all enthusiastic fans. According to the Introduction, Private Memoirs and Confessions did not have a warm reception when published, as it was seen as an attack on religion. I think that it's quite clearly an attack on religious fanaticism or religion taken to extremes, rather than a criticism of religion itself. James Hogg does not seem to believe that religion justifies murder, an issue we still grapple with today. It may have been an influence on another Scottish writer looking at the duality of good and evil in Jekyll and Hyde. To me it was a worthy read based on the author's reach, the unique nature of it all, and the world I completely inhabited while reading. [4 Stars]