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| Wilkie Collins’s tombstone in Kensal Green Cemetary / photo by Ian Mole |
Wiki notes:
The Woman in White is an epistolary novel written by Wilkie Collins in 1859, serialized in 1859–1860, and first published in book form in 1860. It is considered to be among the first mystery novels and is widely regarded as one of the first (and finest) in the genre of 'sensation novels'.
The story is considered an early example of detective fiction with the hero, Walter Hartright, employing many of the sleuthing techniques of later private detectives. The use of multiple narratives draws on Collins's legal training, and as he points out in his Preamble: 'the story here presented will be told by more than one pen, as the story of an offence against the laws is told in Court by more than one witness'. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer listed The Woman in White number 23 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 77 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
In paperback (book) form it is 764 pages. In audible format it is just under 25 hours. I listened to an audible copy made by USF Lit2Go (free downloads).
I happened to listen to this book over the Christmas/New Years holidays, the full month that oldest was home. It was a very good book to listen to in odd moments and bits, because it was easy to understand/follow. I kept track of all the characters easily. I knew what was going on as I jumped back into it each time. I did not feel that I needed to keep notes.
There was no Sparknotes listing for The Woman in White, but Wiki did a good job with their Wilkie Collins entry, so I read that as context for this book.
The style of this book reminded me of Dracula, 1897 Gothic horror novel by Irish author Bram Stoker, minus the vampires. Part of it was the style of the language (books were written 38 years apart in the same general part of the world), but the main reason was both of the books were written as if taken from different excerpts of various people's diaries/journals. (The term for this is an epistolary novel.)
I really enjoyed Dracula. But there were people in my book group that month who could not keep track of all the points of view. I liked that concept in Dracula and therefore was comfortable with it in The Woman in White.
This book was first brought to my attention by Ali (over a year ago I think). The Woman in White is Ali's all time favorite book. I thought it was very good also.
One of my book review groups just read this book. Ali had mentioned it, I researched it, I suggested it when we did our planning last fall. No one (in the group) was familiar with the book before I mentioned it. I had to push the group facilitator (a bit) to add it to the list. The size was daunting. We do not meet in December, we pick a long book for January, The Woman in White was our selection for this year.
The facilitator (who I had to talk into it) loved it. In fact everyone in the group loved it with the exception of one woman. She did finish it, but was not a fan. She did not like the fact that the characters were not more fully developed.
We are reading Oliver Twist for this same group next month. It will be interesting to see what she thinks of that book. The two titles are similar in a lot of ways. Both were written in serial format with monthly installments. Both are heavy on plot and have a lot of characters. And the characters are not very fully develped. both could be considered sesationalized novels. I believe Collins and Dickens were contemporaries and friends.
There were sections near the middle of The Woman in White where I thought Wilkie's foreshadowing was a bit too obvious. We talked about the foreshadowing a bit at my group. Things that I thought were very obvious, almost no one else caught. So it might have just been my brain. The oldest has said I do tend to pick up on things more than most people. Walter (the artist's) narratives were my favorites. (This happened with Dracula too, for everyone in my reading group in fact, we all loved the same narrator).
We also spent a lot of time talking about gender roles and sexual orientation and genetics and the law (in England at that time) as it relates to the characters in The Woman in White.
Here are four popular culture random facts about Wilkie Collins (according to Wiki):
Wilkie Collins is the fictional narrator of the 2009 historical novel Drood by Dan Simmons. The book is based in part on Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood. He also appears as a fictional character in Wanting, a 2008 historical novel by Richard Flanagan.
Actress Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick named their son James Wilkie Broderick after Matthew's father and Collins.
There are Hidden Object Games based on the Moonstone and The Woman in White.
A biography of Wilkie Collins by Peter Ackroyd was featured in the radio programme Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 in February 2012.
