But The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer isn't real. It's fiction, and far too much of it reads like my admittedly inexperienced impression of a gothic romance novel--two hundred and fifty pages of the musings of a person not only about whom I don't care but whom I actually dislike. Perhaps the language of the book is appropriate, perhaps the settings are meticulously detailed, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. My issue with the Diary is that there is no character development, and that's a huge problem. Before the first few pages are up, our main character is worshipping both good and evil. By the end of the book, she's doing the same thing. She never changes her approach to her husband, never effectively develops relations with anyone (the diary format of the book just asks us to assume a deep connection with her maid), never really grows or changes. Her character develops like a sine wave. Really, the only change that occurs in Ellen is that she goes from having lesbian fantasies to expressing them, and that's not enough to keep me interested.