I haven't quite finished Wilkie Collins' brilliant 19th century novel, "The Woman In White," but I had to go ahead and start my review to say that I am thrilled with it. I picked it up from the shelf because it was in the mystery section of my local bookstore, and I took it home because Collins had me on the first page.

Having its origination as a 19th century serial novel, "The Woman In White" is written in first person; in fact, it is actually a modified epistolary form from the perspective of several of the characters. This approach is engaging and revealing but feels a little clunky at times. From the perspective of a 21st century American schooled in the taut 20th century prose of Strunk & White, the story is sometimes needlessly convoluted and its sentence structures occasionally obtuse.

However, Collins' mastery of narrative is phenomenal--there is just the right amount of tension and release throughout the story to propel the reader through the 600-plus pages. Additionally, certain passages in the novel are amongst the most well-crafted writing I have ever encountered; his description of character is multi-faceted and detailed, giving his readers living people to engage with on the page. I pause from time to time in my forward-movement through the pages and take a few minutes to review a passage about a character or situation that I've just read because the prose is so amazingly well-written; I have to read it over and over again.

I plan to return with additional comments after finishing this superb novel, but I must say that, while I long to find what the outcome of the mystery will be, I emphatically do not want it to end!

Beautifully written Victorian gothic mystery novel. So beautifully written, in parts, that it pains me to give it three stars. I had to give it this so-so rating, however, due to the fact that Laura Fairlie is just SO dumb. So dumb. I don't know if I've ever encountered a more stupid character in any other Victorian novel. She is completely helpless and hapless, which makes Walter Hartright's obsession with her quite perplexing. She can't even carry a normal conversation most of the time, withering away into a pathetic bundle of ragged nerves at the first hint of even a mild calamity. No life decision is too easy for her - if you were to tell her the tea in the pantry was gone and could she please go to the store to get some more, she would probably collapse into a chair in a complete fright. She does nothing, absolutely NOTHING, of value for the entire book. I do not think she even knows how to choose her own meal. Meanwhile her beloved Walter is running willy-nilly, risking life and limb for her every page. It’s incredible. And Collins decided to write an 800 page novel revolving around her life story!

Still though, this was a fairly entertaining novel and parts of it were quite dark and gothic and very enjoyable to read, so I can easily see how this is one of the best known gothic Victorian novels. Also bonus points for Count Fosco - the scheming giant of a man was probably the most interesting and best written character in the whole thing.

Sometimes it is so damn hard to put your mindspace in the right place to enjoy a piece so far out of your frame, and this is definitely one of those books.

I knew a bit of what I might expect, after all, I did enjoy reading Drood and so I got a real hankering to read an actual extremely popular novel by such a wild character in a modern book about Wilkie and Charles. But that's neither here nor there. I probably wouldn't have ever picked this one up without it, though.

On to the novel at hand. It's a mystery! And if I can believe wikipedia, it's one of the very first ever written, and considered to be one of the top 100 novels ever written! Whoopie! I mean, that's all great and all. But did I enjoy it? Actually... I did. To a degree.

Of course, the mental gymnastics were pretty strenuous. After all, I have to suspend belief that Laura was NOT TSTL. Tstl? Yes. Tstl. Every step of the way, she made the most horrible decisions, either by not listening to her heart or not having a brain in her head. If this were a mystery novel of even 20 years after its written date of 1854, we'd have killed this one off like a redshirt for sure. Therefore, I am UTTERLY AMAZED by the ending. I've never seen such brilliant contrivance to make such an unlikable airhead pull through to the very end, have her love, her fortune, and her unwitting revenge upon all who had assailed her.

I mean, WOW. Wilkie Collins is a MASTER.

That being said, I thought the Count was pretty much awesome. Everyone except for Laura and Walter managed to transform themselves from cardboard cutouts into genuine people full of both good and bad.

Sometimes the descriptions were cumbersome and made me wish for a bit of a Hemingway Edit, but that's a complaint I can make about any of the literature of that day. There was one notable exception. I loved our enlightenment of Count Fosco's animals. It's details like this that turn a sensational-ish novel into something a bit more memorable.

I swear, though: Laura was consistently tstl. Thank GOD for her half-sister. Miss Halcombe was pretty damn awesome from start to finish, and I agree 100% with the Count's esteem of her.

The one thing I cannot be more pleased about, after finishing this, is the fact that there wasn't some long-drawn-out court scene so reminiscent of modern police drama or mysteries. We had the hint of it in the beginning, and it could have gone that way, but I can't be happier with the outcome as it actually occurred.

There was a hell of a lot of expanded plot in this novel, and it was all so logical and well thought out. I'm just so damn AMAZED that the whole society in which they lived was actually able to FUNCTION, ya know? How could people trust each other as much as they did? How could people be so INNOCENT? I mean, really? Really? Was it a function of the black and white nature of the novels of the time to pop all of these features out at us in stark and glowing detail? Or was it just Wilkie? Or was it in actual fact, a real piece of the society in which they all lived?

I'm primarily a sf/f/horror fan, but I truly HAVE read a ton of traditional classics. And yet, I'm still forced to set myself into a Victorian England as if it is some truly alien society so foreign and strange to us. It's funny. I should know better. Life is WEIRD.

This book is an amazing teaching tool. Not because it conveys any great lessons in life or exhibits profound understanding and insight but because it so clearly delineates the beauty and differences in 19th century writing and 21st century writing.

The story is definitely very gothic and one of the best mysteries available. It is in the length of the story - most especially the length of the writing that will probably cause many readers to balk. The descriptions, the conversations, the ideas... virtually everything is pondered at length. Reading this in today's society, where TV, the internet, pictures, videos etc. etc. grant us instant understanding and gratification, can be a tedious and boring job. In order to truly appreciate Collins writing, one must put themselves in the shoes of a reader amid 19th century standards. Most people knew little of life outside their small communities. Few traveled or had experience with people and places beyond the immediate. Thus the need for long explanations and descriptions. It was the only door open for a reader to experience life beyond.

A perfect example would be the description of Count Fosco, a very large Italian man. His description was so intricate and detailed as to take pages (not paragraphs - pages.) To us, that description might seem never-ending. To one who had probably never seen, let alone known an Italian man - good or bad - it described one so perfectly that the reader (without our modern day photography) could picture him with ease.

Therefore, any accurate review of this book must allow for those differences. Readers who enjoy the beauty of the written word just for itself will absolutely revel in this story. Those who are more story driven will need to put on their patience caps to get through it. The story itself is immaculately well-done, it is dark without being terrifying, riveting without being graphic. It is just couched within a style long forgotten and truly appreciated.

"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace."

Written in 1859-60 by William "Wilkie" Collins and originally published in serial form in Charles Dickens' magazine (Wilkie and Charles were good friends), The Woman in White is considered one of the earliest examples of detective fiction, though it's really just the better part of the second half of this book that has any real detecting going on. Before that you have to wade through star-crossed love and the heroine acting all self-sacrificing (<---very bad idea, at least in this case). There's quite a bit of Victorian melodrama and some eyebrow-raising coincidences, but also some unforgettable characters and some intense suspense in the second half.

Walter Hartright - note the symbolic name - is a young art teacher. One night he helps a distressed lady dressed in white, who was wandering down the street, find a cab.



After she's gone, a couple of men chasing her tell Walter that she's escaped from an asylum. Oops! But the lady in white will soon affect his life more than he can know...

Walter takes a job for a few months teaching art to a couple of gently bred young ladies, Laura Fairlie and Marian Halcombe. Laura is lovely, quiet and timid (and also, BTW, bears a startling resemblance to the mysterious woman in white); Marian has a singularly unattractive face but a charming, outgoing personality. Guess which one Walter falls for? And Laura loves him too, though they never speak of it, except to Marian.

**some spoilers in the next 3 paragraphs for the first half of the book**

But Laura is an heiress, out of Walter's class, and she's also engaged to a older baronet, as arranged by her family, so she and Walter sadly part ways. He goes on an expedition to South America to let time, distance and adventure heal his wounded heart. She marries her baronet, Sir Percival Glyde, figuring, I guess, that she might as well, and he's always been kind to her.

After the marriage - which quickly goes south since Glyde only married Laura for her money, and has no interest in being nice to her once they're married - strange things start to happen. Glyde wants Laura to sign papers (she still has control of her fortune) but won't show her what she's signing, hiding everything except the line where she's supposed to sign. Even in Victorian times, that's pretty alarming for the lady involved.



Marian, who's living with Laura and Sir Percival, is very concerned for the fragile Laura's wellbeing. And she deeply mistrusts Percival and his other houseguests, the huge, urbane Count Fosco, who acts all affable but has a dangerous glint in his eyes, and his subservient wife, who stands to inherit a chunk of money if Laura dies.


Count Fosco

Things get more complicated from there, but I don't want to spoil it. The actual mystery is a little unlikely but it's an intriguing read. The novel had a few parts that were long-winded and/or sentimental in that distinctively Victorian kind of way, and (also typical of older books) there are a lot of stereotypes. For instance, the women tend to faint or get ill rather than be tough and useful, although Marian is generally an exception to that rule. But the story really sucked me in the further I got into it. Marian and Count Fosco are truly unique and memorable characters. Identity is a recurring theme, for the villains as well as some of the main characters, as are hidden secrets.

I especially liked the quasi-investigative structure of the novel, with narration by multiple characters, each with his or her own distinctive voice and point of view. The kind-hearted, loyal Walter; Marian, writing in her diary; Laura's whiny invalid uncle, who just wants to be left alone and is of no help to Laura in her trials; the prideful Count Fosco, weaving his plans; a couple of servants: all of them get their turn explaining their part of the events in this book. I thought that was really well done. As a lawyer, I found the lawyer's description of marriage settlements particularly interesting, along with the negotiations between him (acting for Laura) and Sir Percival's lawyer. And when he says, and then repeats, "No daughter of mine should have been married to any man alive under such a settlement as I was compelled to make for Laura Fairlie," it was a chilling moment.


Another Uncle Fairlie fail

Wilkie also has a sense of humor, which pops out occasionally. Walter describes Mrs. Vesey, Laura's former governess, so:

Some of us rush through life, and some of us saunter through life. Mrs. Vesey sat through life... A mild, a compliant, an unutterably tranquil and harmless old lady, who never by any chance suggested the idea that she had been actually alive since the hour of her birth. Nature has so much to do in this world, and is engaged in generating such a vast variety of co-existent productions, that she must surely be now and then too flurried and confused to distinguish between the different processes that she is carrying on at the same time. Starting from this point of view, it will always remain my private persuasion that Nature was absorbed in making cabbages when Mrs. Vesey was born, and that the good lady suffered the consequences of a vegetable preoccupation in the mind of the Mother of us all.

Buddy read with the Non-crunchy Cool Classics Pantsless group. Most of the group begged off - they seem to have some sort of aversion to 600+ page Victorian mysteries - but Evgeny, Jeff, Stepheny and maybe one or two others made it through the whole thing with me. Yay team!

Period illustrations are from early editions of The Woman in White.

I read The Moonstone and The Woman in White back-to-back recently, with a view to seeing how they struck me now that I have become something of a specialist in Wilkie Collins’s less visited works (Armadale, anyone? Basil? The Law and the Lady? The Dead Secret?) It seemed an interesting exercise to see whether Collins’s most celebrated works were leagues ahead of his near-forgotten backlist, or not.

My reaction in this experiment was interestingly differentiated (interestingly to me, at any rate). I was not particularly impressed by The Moonstone, whose reputation I suspect has survived mainly because it has a good claim to be the founding work of the detective novel genre. That gives it a certain historical interest, and it comes burnished by the recommendation of none other than T. S. Eliot, who described it as ‘the first and best of detective novels’—a claim the basis of which John Sutherland amusingly destroys in his crisp introduction to the Oxford World’s Classics edition.

Claims of historical priority aside, The Moonstone didn’t strike me as vintage Wilkie Collins. It makes good use of Collins’s clever device of having multiple narrators, with different viewpoints and styles, but it is low on standout characters, his great forte. The young lovers, Rachel Verinder and Franklin Blake, are underdeveloped, while the detective, Sergeant Cuff, doesn’t really have enough space to establish himself. I only really woke up, as a reader, in the presence of some of Collins’s signature Victorian misfits: the melancholy, disabled ex-thief and housemaid Rosanna Spearman and the intriguing, mixed-race, opium-addicted doctor’s assistant Ezra Jennings. These figures are only given bit parts, however, and they don’t emerge as fully-fledged characters in the same way as Miserrimus Dexter (The Law and the Lady) or Allan Armadale/Ozias Midwinter (Armadale.)

Where The Moonstone does score is in the interesting way in which it deals with Britain’s imperial heritage, symbolized by the Moonstone of the title—a gaudy, and valuable, gem for the Brits who fight over it, but a sacred, numinous object for the ‘Hindoo’ jugglers-in-disguise who come in search of it. Sutherland’s introduction to the edition I was reading teases out these political implications impeccably.

The Woman in White seemed to me far richer and better-realized than The Moonstone, and I think it would be my recommendation for anyone planning to approach Collins from scratch. The characterization is stronger here. The impecunious young artist, Walter Hartwright, emerges more vividly as romantic lead than Franklin Blake. Correspondingly, the slight insipidity of his love interest, Laura Fairlie, is more than compensated for by her ‘ugly’ but intellectually powerful and dynamic half-sister, Marian Halcombe, who is quite magnificent, especially at the beginning of the novel. It’s hard to think that it’s a pure matter of coincidence that she shares a forename with Marian, or Mary Anne, Evans—George Eliot, in other words.

The Woman in White can also boast surely one of the great villains of all time in Count Fosco. Although Fosco is not physically disabled, like some of Collins’s strongest characters, he shares with Marian a mismatch with gender expectations. Where Marian is characterized initially as ‘virile’ (while also sexy in a fulsome, corsetless way), there is something distinctly feminine about the gargantuan Fosco, with his taste for cakes and his delicate handling of his signature white mice. The interaction between this terrible twosome is what makes The Woman in White succeed so wonderfully—although the intricacy of the plotting also contributes.

My conclusion would be, I suppose, that, even if The Moonstone and The Women in White remain Collins’s best-known works, by a long chalk, they are not necessarily his greatest. I would counsel anyone thinking of starting on Collins to try The Woman in White first, followed by Armadale (I have yet to reread No Name, which I loved first time round). By that time, any reader should have quite a good idea whether this extraordinary novelist is for them.

Gothic popcorn from the first to the last. And I’m pretty sure that was the point, if my understanding of Wilkie Collins’ deal is correct. Ghosts and murders and spies and arson and street fighting and doomed love, oh my! The promise of all that was the string that reeled me in at first (and boy did it deliver!), but it was the narrative structure that made me stay. I loved the passing of narrators and different document forms as we went, and how that became part of the story itself and made it feel as close to a documentary as possible (or as much as you can with the amount of cloaks and daggers and Drama involved here.) I loved how good he was at altering the narrator’s voice so truly none of them sounded the same- as anyone who follows me knows, I love a good in charge narrator.

And some of these characters! Oh some were the cardboard gothic cutouts you think they will be (Laura is a notable and unsurprising- annoyingly unsurprising-example). But others are wonderfully well done. Count Fosco, at least for most of it, twirled his mustache *and* felt frighteningly intelligent and menacing (I just wish he hadn’t undone all of his work on that at the end). Mr Fairlie the viciously selfish invalid. Gilmore the at-the-end-of-his-rope lawyer. Mrs Catherick the crawling up by her bootstraps small town witch and a half. And Marian! My glorious, glorious Marian! The true hero of this novel- something the main character himself closes the book admitting. She’s too fucking good for the lot of them. I wanted to scream with frustration by the end about what became of her. Did anyone else tear their hair out a little every time Walter and Marian talked about Laura and managed her like the helpless child she was, then had Walter sing Marian’s praises to the sky, then turn around and go weak at the knees for the lady-child Laura again? I mean I didn’t need them to get together because Marian is too good for him too, but ughhhh there must be good feminist as well as LGBT readings of this book out there. I feel like Wilkie had her talk about being “just a woman,” so often just to calm people down that she knew her place- she’d be threateningly independent and intelligent otherwise. I guess it’s like in Middlemarch where people love Dorothea and say she should have been better known and more people been acquainted with her awesomeness- before Eliot tells us “but no one could say exactly how that should have happened,” and then the novel just ends on that note. Just “Here’s your HEA, or is it?!? Enjoy this extremely uncomfortable fly in your ointment, where it will and should keep showing up forever.” Probably not a coincidence that this was written around the same time.

My one thing was that I think the bit at the end with Fosco and the societies and all that nonsense was where it jumped the shark for me. I was fine with him running off into the sunset- I didn’t need international conspiracies/secret spy jujitsu in our finale. I know it was one of the 19th century bogeymans in the newspapers at the time tho, so maybe it was a big crowd pleasing banger when this came out. I’d buy that. I bet serialized versions of this appeared alongside accounts of assassinations and new nation states saber rattling.

Super fun though! I did it half audiobook, half on paper, and it was excellent both ways. A great leisurely evening read.

One of my all-time favorite books. I believe I have finally worn out this copy. The pages are yellow and falling out. Time to shop for a new one :)

3,5/5

Wilkie Collins, amigo íntimo de Dickens, publicó en 1859 una de las obras considerada pionera del género policiaco y de misterio. «La mujer de blanco» es una novela epistolar (alterna diarios y relatos) de múltiples personajes que dan luz a una investigación al más puro estilo detectivesco que creó sensación en su momento y sigue siendo un referente en la actualidad.

La historia comienza con el relato de Walter Hartright que es contratado por el señor Fairlie para dar unas clases de dibujo a su sobrina Laura y a la medio hermana de esta, Marian, en Cumberland. Pronto se verá envuelto en una serie de hechos intrigantes y tras sus encuentros con la misteriosa mujer de blanco empezará a intentar resolver un intrincado puzzle.

A partir de entonces la novela se mantiene en una narración ágil, sumamente entretenida y numerosas hipótesis revolotean en nuestra mente, atrapando e incitando al lector a seguir leyendo hasta descubrir de la mano de los diferentes testimonios, la oculta realidad. Pero llegado cierto momento, la trama adopta un ritmo excesivamente lento llegando a una conclusión desprovista del encanto que la caracterizaba previamente.

A parte del ritmo frenético de medio libro, debo destacar la calidad de los personajes: Marian y el conde Fosco (el verdadero villano de esta historia), a pesar de que a mi humilde parecer, sus dos finales no son acordes a lo esperado pues pierden carácter y fuerza en la decepcionante recta final (al igual que la relación romántica con la que no he conectado y el abandono de la mujer de blanco que tanta importancia parecía tener). Esto es un sentimiento general con todo lo que concierne la conclusión que lejos de satisfacerme, cambia radicalmente todo lo que opinaba y sentía a lo largo de su lectura.

En definitiva, creo que este escrito es exquisito en su comienzo, la ambientación, la estructura narrativa, las pesquisas de los protagonistas así como la incertidumbre que atrapa y confunde, pero por desgracia el desenlace me ha sumido en una decepción irrevocable. Siento que hubiera podido ser algo excepcional pero se queda a medias.

Αυτό το βιβλίο που γνώρισε πρωτοφανή απήχηση στην εποχή του και καθήλωσε το βικτωριανό αναγνωστικό κοινό με την πρωτότυπη ιστορία του και την καινοτομία του ως προς την ανάπτυξη της πλοκής του (στην εισαγωγή διαβάζουμε ότι στοιχήματα έμπαιναν σε σχέση με τα μυστήρια που εξελίσσονται κάθε εβδομάδα που δημοσιευόταν το επόμενο τεύχος της εφημερίδας) παραμένει, πάνω από ενάμιση αιωνα μετά το ίδιο καθηλωτικό - και απολαυστικό.

“The best men are not consistent in good—why should the worst men be consistent in evil?”

The joy of re-visiting an old favourite! I’ve read this novel four times now, studied it at uni, and each time it delighted me. The contemporary public was enthralled too, to the point that even Victorian advertising companies used this ‘fad’ to sell many wares, resulting with The Woman in White appearing everywhere. And would you be surprised to hear that many gentlemen asked to marry Ms Halcome? I love this anecdote - both that fiction became reality for many and that it was Marian who stole the heart of people! But I’m jumping ahead of myself.

For all instances and purposes, Collins crafted a real page-turner. Opting for a narration composed of a multitude of first person narratives in the form of letters, journal entries and testimonies, he was able to create suspense, urgency and confusion, at turns witholding key pieces of information and adjusting the pace as he saw fit. This was also to mimic a court of justice where the readers became judges and investigators, trying to solve the various mysteries, and added a sense of veracity to the text. Collins, following the motto of “make 'em cry, make 'em laugh, make 'em wait”, knew how to catch and keep the attention of his public. He furthermore used many elements of the gothic and melodrama, but in an innovative way that led to the creation of a new school of fiction, that of the novel of sensation.

Our author however didn’t just experiment with the form, he also challenged many notions, such as the role of women in society, marriage, family, and gender expectations, voicing the contemporary anxieties of a new mass society
Laura Fairlie, the stereotyped angel at home, beautiful, voiceless and passive, is the ‘perfect’ heroine, and yet, it is Marian Halcombe, resourceful, masculine, intelligent, courageous, active, who takes the heart of the readers. Count Fosco, super-villain, is portrayed with feminine features, such as sensitivity, and glamourized. Mr. Fairlie is a caricature of feminised position. Even Walter Hartright, who goes from being a drawing-master, equivalent to a male governess, to hero and wage earner, still behaves often in a feminine, insecure fashion. He also is the controlling authority, and although he professes to let the witnesses speak for themselves, he often takes the role of narrator, taking away Marian’s voice, and not letting Laura have one. All are challenging gender assumptions. The notion of identity is at the core of the novel. Its vulnerability is illustrated through the main plot which revolves around the destruction and recovery of the heroine’s identity. It shows control over the female self. Sir Glyde, who wants Laura’s fortune and Anne’s silence, tries to take their identities and confine them to asylums, underlining the powerlessness of (married) women in front of the law. Additionally, the character of Anne Catherick represents madness, or the loss of self. . By placing the action in a domestic, recognizable, setting and using a realistic treatment with no supernatural elements, Collins highlighted the illusory nature of appearances and brought danger into the heart of Victorian homes. While seemingly returning order to the social fabric, he allowed his rebelling nature to come to the fore and made his readership question the very value of this ‘order’ the end is a veritable ‘ménage à trois’, which echoes Collins’s own life to a certain extent.

I could go on and on (I did say it is one of my favourites after all!)... Ultimately, The Woman in White is a brilliant thriller, inciting you to keep turning the pages to find out what is going on, and offering the world two of the most compelling characters ever (Marian and Fosco, of course) :0)

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins
I started this book, encouraged by readers of the group “Victorians!” The type of reading “police investigations” is not at all mine: I’ve never read either a Sherlock Holmes or an Agatha Christie, yes, this kind of reader exists! In fact, I’veve always been afraid of not finding in a detective story, deed characters, feeling, poetry.
But, as it would be foolish to reject a type of books without having read a single one, I started The Woman in White. Result ... I'm hooked on this story! My French edition is 500 pages, I read the first 160 pages last night!
The first sentence, simple, concise, is well chosen: it presents the story and immediately intrigues:
« This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure, and what a Man's resolution can achieve. »
Then, for a few pages, I was a little afraid to find myself in a court, as in a police TV series, which bores me deeply. But, finally, we enter fairly quickly in the story and we are quickly captivated.
The character of Marian Halcombe is a young woman as I like them: intelligent, clairvoyant and good. That of Walter Hartright, who seemed to me soft at first, even lazy, turned out to be a bit romantic and it’s probably this side of his nature that led him to this mysterious story.
For the moment, the police investigation side that I feared doesn’t bother me. Wilkie Collins, apart from the plot, masters the art of knowing when and how to describe nature through the eyes of the drawing-master, the discreet and polite birth of love feelings, the different links weaved between the protagonists depending on whether they’re a woman, a man, according to the social rank, wealth, or degree of friendship or love.
There are some passages of reflections on life that I had already made by myself, such as:
« I have observed, not only in my sister's case, but in the instances of others, that we of the young generation are nothing like so hearty and so impulsive as some of our elders. I constantly see old people flushed and excited by the prospect of some anticipated pleasure which altogether fails to ruffle the tranquillity of their serene grandchildren. »
And also :
« Admiration of those beauties of the inanimate world, which poetry so largely and so eloquently describes, is not, even in the best of us, one of the original instincts of our nature. Those whose lives are most exclusively passed amid the ever-changing wonders of sea and land are also those who are most universally insensible to every aspect of Nature not directly associated with the human interest of their calling. Our capacity of appreciating the beauties of the earth we live on is, in truth, one of the civilised accomplishments which we all learn as an Art. »
In short, I'm happy I started reading my first novel by Wilkie Collins.

And now as usual, the same one in French :

La dame en blanc, de Wilkie Collins

J’ai commencé ce livre, incitée par les lectrices du groupe Victorians! . Le genre enquête policière n’est pas du tout mon genre de lecture : je n’ai jamais lu ni un Sherlock Holmes ni un Agatha Christie, eh oui, ça existe ! En fait, j’ai toujours craint de ne pas trouver dans un roman policier de profondeur des personnages, de sentiment, de poésie.
Mais, comme se serait idiot de rejeter un genre sans avoir lu un seul livre, je me suis lancée. Résultat… je suis accroc à cette histoire ! Mon édition française fait 500 pages, j’en ai lu 160 cette nuit !
La première phrase, simple, conscise, est bien choisie : elle présente l’histoire et intrigue d’emblée :
« Cette histoire montre avec quel courage une femme peut supporter les épreuves de la vie et ce dont un homme est capable pour arriver à ses fins. »
Puis, pendant quelques pages, j’ai eu un peu peur de me retrouver dans un tribunal, comme dans un feuilleton télévisé policier, ce qui m’ennuie profondément. Mais, finalement, on entre assez rapidement dans l’histoire et on est assez vite captivé.
Le personnage de Marian Halcombe est une jeune femme comme je les aime : intelligente, clairvoyante et bonne. Celui de Walter Hartright, qui m’a semblé mou au départ, voire, fainéant, s’est avéré être un brin romantique et c’est sans doute ce côté de sa nature qui l’a entraîné dans cette mystérieuse histoire.
Pour le moment, le côté enquête policière que je redoutais ne me gêne pas. Wilkie Collins, hormis l’intrigue, maîtrise l’art de savoir quand et comment décrire la nature à travers les yeux du professeur de dessin, la naissance discrète et polie des sentiments amoureux, les différentes liés tissés entre eux par chaque personnage selon qu’il est une femme, un homme, selon son rang social, sa richesse, son degré d’amitié ou d’amour.
Il y a certains passages de réflexions sur la vie que je m’étais déjà faites, telles que :
« J’ai observé, non seulement chez ma sœur, mais aussi chez d’autres jeunes gens, que notre génération est beaucoup moins expensive que celle de nos parents. Je vois continuellement des personnes âgées, joyeuses et agitées devant la perspective de quelque plaisir qui ne trouble même pas la tranquilité de leurs enfants ou petits-enfants. »
Et aussi :
« L’admiration pour les splendeurs inanimées de la nature que la poésie décrit avec tant d’éloquence n’existe pas à l’état latent dans notre être intime. Ceux dont la vie s’écoule au milieu des merveilles toujours changeantes de la terre et de la mer sont précisemment ceux qui s’y interessent le mpins, à moins que ces changements continuels ne soient étroitement liés à leur profession. C’est tout un art de savoir apprécier les merveilles de l’univers sensible, et c’est ce que la civilisation nous enseigne chaque jour. »
Bref, je suis bien contente d’avoir commencé à lire mon premier roman de Wilkie Collins.