rachelmanija | Entries tagged with author: collins wilkie

That was SO SATISFYING. My favorite part was the middle (Marian's narration) but I was not disappointed with the rest. I love that a book written in 1860, which gives so much time to make tropes stale and old, still managed to pull off so many genuine gasp-out-loud moments and startling twists.

Marian is still the best. All else is spoilery.

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My only real disappointment was that it mentions in passing that a certain character can turn dead humans into a stone-like substance that will preserve them forever, and this never comes up again. I want my human corpse statues!

Which Wilkie Collins book shall I read next?

Do any of them have good audio versions?

Are there any good filmed adaptations of The Woman in White?

The Woman in White (Penguin Classics)

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This book is SO GOOD, you guys! I was enjoying it before but Marian's narration is amaaaaazing, so is Mr. Fairlie's in a very different way, it's so funny and suspenseful, I have NO idea where it's all going, and there are now pet white mice in a homemade pagoda!

Everyone needs to read this book. It really kicks into gear once you hit Marian's narration. I am really admiring how Collins creates completely different voices for all the narrators so far. That is very difficult to do when they're all first-person, and he manages it marvelously.

Marian is the best. She's so snarky and determined and practical.

The main body of the building is of the time of that highly-overrated woman, Queen Elizabeth.

The description of Blackwater Park is marvelously menacing.

On the farther bank from me the trees rose thickly again, and shut out the view, and cast their black shadows on the sluggish, shallow water. As I walked down to the lake, I saw that the ground on its farther side was damp and marshy, overgrown with rank grass and dismal willows. The water, which was clear enough on the open sandy side, where the sun shone, looked black and poisonous opposite to me, where it lay deeper under the shade of the spongy banks, and the rank overhanging thickets and tangled trees. The frogs were croaking, and the rats were slipping in and out of the shadowy water, like live shadows themselves, as I got nearer to the marshy side of the lake. I saw here, lying half in and half out of the water, the rotten wreck of an old overturned boat, with a sickly spot of sunlight glimmering through a gap in the trees on its dry surface, and a snake basking in the midst of the spot, fantastically coiled and treacherously still.

After several shocking developments, we meet an amazing new character...

The gentleman, dressed, as usual, in his blouse and straw hat, carried the gay little pagoda-cage, with his darling white mice in it, and smiled on them, and on us, with a bland amiability which it was impossible to resist.

"With your kind permission," said the Count, "I will take my small family here--my poor-little-harmless-pretty-Mouseys, out for an airing along with us. There are dogs about the house, and shall I leave my forlorn white children at the mercies of the dogs? Ah, never!"

He chirruped paternally at his small white children through the bars of the pagoda, and we all left the house for the lake.

NO SPOILERS for anything past the point I've read! Not even hints! However feel free to discuss the parts I've already read.

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The Woman in White (Penguin Classics)

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I have just started reading the classic epistolatory mystery novel/Gothic from 1860. I've read Walter Hartright's first chapter and Vincent Gilmore, Solicitor's chapter. So far I have somehow remained completely unspoiled for this book so please do not spoil me!

While Collins sometimes goes on and on and on, he also has extremely propulsive storytelling that makes it obvious why this is a classic. Also, there's a lot of funny bits, which I was not expecting. It's tremendously fun and while it has many now-familiar tropes, it doesn't feel at all stale; I have only the vaguest guesses about where it's all going.

Walter Hartwell is a young drawing teacher who's offered a position teaching painting to two young women at Limmeridge House. On his way there, walking down a dark road at night, a hand suddenly touches his shoulder! A woman in white has appeared out of nowhere!

She requests his help getting a carriage, mentions that she has fond memories of the mistress of Limmeridge House, and says she's afraid of a Baronet. He helps her out, but after she's gone two men appear, searching for a woman in white: "She has escaped from my Asylum. Don't forget: a woman in white."

Hartwell says nothing.

( And then many, many more exciting events occur! )

Once again, no plot spoilers for the rest of the book! But I would love to discuss what's happened up to now.

The Woman in White (Penguin Classics)

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A Quokka Dreeds its Weird

I picked up a pen, I wrote my own deliverance

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (Complete)

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (Post # 2 - Marian Halcombe & Frederick Fairlie, Esquire)

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins (Post # 1 - Walter Hartright & Vincent Gilmore, Solicitor)

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