One Book Four Covers: The Monk by Matthew Lewis
I figured Matthew Lewis’s The Monk warranted some one book, four covers treatment on account of my recent read through.
First cover is your standard fine art crop job where you take some old painting that fits the work and hone in on a detail, which in this case suits the book perfectly. The scene shown could be that moment when Ambrosio realizes Satan is’t actually going to save jim.
I like the second over even if it is a bit silly and calls to mind those old Italian movies where Mickey Rooney would dress up as a devil and cavort about. So if I were reading that I’d expect some comedy along with the weirdness. That tongue would be firmly in cheek, which isn’t the case really at all. Lewis may have willfully indulged in melodrama, but he seemed pretty sincere.
The third cover reminds me of Andres Serrano’s Piss-Christ. Is that good? Is that bad? I don’t know. But the eyes above the cross… meh. They gotta go.
The fourth cover is the one I rad, and it’s pretty hohum and dull, but I do love the skull and blood drops on that whole Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural. The cover doesn’t stand out on its own, but stands out as being part of a particular series. But looking at the robed figure beside the rest of these, I like it. The whole of it fits well together.
Yesterweird 
More so than with some of the one-book-four-covers cases, in this case I get a sense that I’m homing in on some sense of the actual story. If I saw just one of them, I’m pretty sure I’d get the wrong idea, but with all four, I get the sense that it’s about a fallen angel/Lucifer/devil who’s intimately (second cover) involved with someone–maybe the titular monk, or maybe becomes the titular monk–and dramatic stuff (third & first cover) ensues. (So how accurate an assessment of the plot is that?)
A teeny-bit close. THE MONK’s about a monk that sells his soul to the Devil so he can seduce a young woman who turns out to be his half-sister. It’s also about the young woman’s boy friend,his friend, and the boy friend’s sister who’s run afoul of some evil nuns.