The Moonstone

The Moonstone is known as the first detective novel*, and it's a cracking one. You can see things invented here that were directly borrowed by future writers: Holmes' overconfidence (and his use of London urchins as agents); Agatha Christie's exploration of narrative reliability.

* as opposed to Poe's Dupin, which was the first detective story - I know, we're splitting hairs.

And if the mystery's not enough for you, how about mysterious Oriental cultures? Romance? Quicksand?* Opium? This is a ludicrously entertaining book, almost on the level of Count of Monte Cristo for sheer kicks.

* Things I Was Super On The Watch For When I Was A Kid And It Turns Out They Are Not Actually Things
- Alligators
- Amnesia
- Chloroform-soaked rags
- Razors in apples
- Steamrollers
- Quicksand

It shares with Collins' other masterpiece, The Woman in White, a preoccupation with narrative - from different sources, in different voices, with varying motives and degrees of reliability. Like Woman in White, it's set up like a court case: a series of witnesses come forward to tell their part of the story in more or less chronological order, while commenting on (and insulting) each other's narratives. Many characters also cite other texts: Betteredge is obsessed with Robinson Crusoe; Miss Clack carts around a variety of religious tracts, all of which are made up, which sucks because how badly do you want to read "Satan in the Hairbrush" and "A Word With You On Your Cap Ribbons"? Pretty bad, man - and finally, Ezra Jennings will cite De Quincey's landmark drug memoir Memoirs of an Opium Eater.

Which, by the way: unlike Woman in White (1860), The Moonstone (1868) was written while Collins was deep in the throes of a laudanum addiction, and the whole thing can be seen as, more or less, about opium.

Also unlike Woman in White, which features one of my all-time favorite female heroines, the diamond-sharp Miss Halcombe, The Moonstone has an awkward relationship to women. Many of its narrators are prone to statements like this:

"Men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women - if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything, I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life.

The first couple times you see stuff like this you can figure Collins means for you to laugh at it - but after like ten different people say things along similar lines, you do start to wonder a little.

Woman in White just edges out Moonstone for me as my favorite Collins. Its characters - Miss Halcombe and the mighty Count Fosco - are more indelible than Moonstone's. But The Moonstone includes a thinly disguised Richard Burton, as well as the terrifically bitchy Miss Clack...look, here's my secret: I like Collins better than his buddy Dickens. This book is a gang of fun.

Damn those heathen savages trying to get back their stolen sacred stone from them sahibs!

Mildly spoilerish
To my utmost disappointment The Butler, didn't do it :(
Considering that this book was written wayyy back in the 1840-1850s, one needs to ignore
a) the methods of solving a supposed crime and mystery behind certain unexplained events
b) the "oriental" tenor of describing certain ahem races/nationalities (using the term loosely here)
c) the obscure experiments providing confounding astounding and accurate results! (to solve the aforementioned, unexplained events)
d) the multiple POVs (half of which imho added nothing to the story, except for making almost 60% of the content of the book)

Continuing with d) I wish the author had not made this such a lengthy story. Had been it been just the first 15% and last quarter of the book, it would have been a fast paced thriller.
So weighing the likes/dislikes, frustrations and fun that I had while reading this book.
I'l rate it 2.25 stars

It was not TOO bad.
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P.S. I was immensely pleased that the natives got their stolen stuff back ;)
Readers Bias! I have a right to it.

P.P.S: somewhere the book mentions the Indian god Moon with four arms riding an antelope.

My search on the world wide web lead me to this link;
http://www.victorianweb.org/art/illus...
Borrowing the images here
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Top: The American serial's 4 January 1868 Headnote vignette showing the Brahmins and the idol of the Hindu Moon God. Centre: An expanded version of the same illustration, The Idol of the Moon God in the Peter Fenelon Collier edition (1900). Bottom: An expanded view of the original 1868 vignette, The Diamond and the Ganges (1874, second edition, Chapter 11, p. 90.)
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I would love to get my hands on those illustrated versions!

Holy shit! This was actually funny and I was not expecting that at all.
It was a serialized story, so it tends to ramble in places and not wrap up as quickly as it probably would have otherwise. However, it didn't feel tedious or drawn out like some of those stories do. This was truly entertaining. I'd recommend this to anyone who loves locked-door mysteries because this one definitely stands the test of time.
The book is told by four different narrators who have been asked by Franklin Blake to write what they were witnesses to in regard to the crime. Franklin himself had inadvertently become deeply embroiled in the mysterious disappearance of the Moonstone and was looking to record the hijinks for posterity.



My favorite voice is that of Gabriel Betteredge. He's an elderly and much-beloved servant who has been in service to this family all of his life. He's loyal to a fault, and a truly humorous narrator in that grumpy but loveable old man way. The descriptions of his marriage made me laugh out loud, and his certainty that his favorite book, Robinson Crusoe, held the answers to all of life's problems was endearing.
And also made me realize that I need to read Robinson Crusoe.



Drusilla Clack is our second narrator. She's a hilariously accurate busybody who lives her life for the church. She spends her days handing out unwanted Bible tracts, giving unwanted advice, and drooling over Rachel's cousin (and rebuffed suitor), Godfrey Ablewhite. Godfrey is that guy. You know, the one who champions all the women's charities and basks in the worship of all the local spinsters.
Oh god. He's awful but in the absolute best way possible for a story like this.
Collins added in so many funny little extras that I wasn't expecting and they caught me off guard because so many of these older classics tend to be so dry.
For example, Miss Clack annoys one man so much that he starts cursing, then she proceeds to hand him a tract on swearing called Hush for Heaven's Sake. I loved that! Mostly because it makes you realize that people aren't really all that different now than they were back then. It's nice to know that the Drucilla Clacks of the world have always been universally...avoided.



Mr. Bruff is the family's solicitor, loyal champion during some hard times, and the third narrator of the tale. He's not as funny to listen to as the first two narrators, but he's a very likable guy.
You feel like you are getting the real story from him.



Ezra Jennings is the 4th narrator. He's Doctor Candy's foreign assistant with the dark and mysterious past and a heart of gold. This is the guy who's got the clue no one else has and his information may just crack the case wide open.



Each of these people tells what they know through their firsthand experiences with the events surrounding the theft of the Moonstone.
Now, underneath all of this mystery is a love story between a guy, Franklin, who is on the cusp of getting his shit together (but still has a few debts to pay off), and a girl, Rachel, who is so up her own ass with her version of morals that I kind of wanted to smack her. But they love each other and you're rooting for those two silly kids to get together and balance each other out.



Ok, so the gist is that Colonel Herncastle murdered some holy men in India and stole their sacred Moonstone while a battle was raging. Nobody could prove what he did, but everyone knew. And the end result was that his family turned their backs on him. So while he had the jewel, he lost all credibility and had to slink off into a dirty corner somewhere.
Fast forward toward the end of his life, and because he's a complete fucktard, he wills it to his niece in the hopes that it ruins her life as it did his, therefore taking his final revenge on his sister. <--who had had enough of his shit by the time he killed the holy men.



When this dude finally keels over, it kicks off an entire circus of crazy events that somehow interconnect in random ways to make for one of the best classic mysteries that I've ever read.
As I was listening to it there were so many things that seemed like one thing, but by the end of the book that part of the story was revealed to be something else entirely.



This? This is one of those books that I'll be recommending to my friends. A lot.

The following is a recently found letter written by the English author Charles Dickens to his friend Wilkie Collins concerning the latter’s newly released 1868 novel The Moonstone:

Charles Dickens
11 Gad’s Hill Place
Hingham, Kent
England

November 13, 1868

Dear Wilkie,

I am now pressing my pen against this paper to congratulate you on the success of your excellent new novel, The Moonstone. I have just completed reading it and I would like to present you with my opinion that this was, as they say, a true “page turner” in every sense of the word. I am also taking the liberty to take this compliment a step further by stating that this is one of the finest mystery novels of all time.

I must confess that I have never actually read a book such as this that captures the sensation of a mysterious theft and a thorough investigation that follows it. It was a fascinating read throughout as the solution to the mystery was also entirely above my suspicion. I also thoroughly enjoyed the use of multi-narration where the reader obtains various different viewpoints during the inquiry concerning the loss of the Indian diamond.

I believe that this novel, The Moonstone, has successfully maintained the same exceptional level of quality as your masterpiece, The Woman in White, and it ranks among the top tiers of the written pages from our fellow countrymen. I have not the shadow of a doubt that this book will continue to enthrall readers for centuries to come. The Moonstone is a best-seller at the local bookseller here in Kent and my excitement for your continued success is immense. Well done, my dear friend Wilkie. We shall celebrate this achievement over a glass of Cognac. Best wishes and I look forward to reading your future works.


Your friend always,

Charles Dickens

T.S. Eliot opinaba que La piedra lunar era “la primera, la más larga y la mejor de las novelas británicas contemporáneas de detectives.” No tengo los conocimientos suficientes para rebatirlo, pero la primera afirmación es un tema bastante discutido y en la actualidad la mayoría opina que “la primera” fue El misterio de Notting Hill, de Charles Warren Adams. Lo que sí es más que probable es que esta de Collins sea la que tuvo una influencia decisiva en lo que vino después.

Con las 784 páginas que tiene mi edición, probablemente calificarla como “la más larga” sea correcto, aunque esto poco tenga que ver con la calidad de la obra y sí con la manera en que fue escrita y publicada, por entregas en All the Year Round, el semanario de Charles Dickens.

Sobre si fue o no “la mejor” habrá millones de opiniones. Me atrevería a decir que en su momento sí lo fue. Lo de menos es la trama, la intriga por saber quién robó la joya no es lo que engancha, ni es nada extraordinaria para el lector, al menos para el actual. Los giros son los típicos, el misterio no deja de enredarse hasta llegar al desenlace, que no creo que sea tampoco demasiado sorprendente.

La principal virtud de la novela es su forma: ocho partes, cada una escrita por un personaje o testigo diferente: un miembro del servicio, Gabriel Betteredge, que tiene una fe ciega en que toda la verdad se encuentra en Robinson Crusoe; la beata e insufrible prima Clack; el sargento Cuff, aficionado al cultivo de rosas… los distintos narradores se hacen referencias cruzadas, se dirigen al lector y buscan su complicidad en un relato que en este sentido resulta sorprendentemente moderno y bien llevado, dándole a cada uno una voz propia e inconfundible, sus narracinoes son interesadas, subjetivas, y por lo tanto poco fiables. Collins dice en el prólogo que la presente historia trata de analizar la influencia que ejerce la personalidad sobre las circunstancias.
Los personajes (los secundarios, la pareja principal es tan sosa y plana que diría que puede que su existencia sea puro sarcasmo) son interesantes, excéntricos y atractivos, aunque me ha faltado aquí un villano comparable al enorme, en todos los sentidos, conde Fosco de La dama de blanco.

Además, toda la novela rezuma ironía y refleja estupendamente la hipocresía de la sociedad victoriana.

Por tanto, las (escasas) tres estrellas se deben solo a mi gusto personal, la novela es entretenida, el misterio está bien llevado, la narración es ágil y aguanta el ritmo razonablemente bien durante sus cientos de páginas, pero en el fondo no deja de ser un folletín algo melodramático, con todo lo malo (y bueno) que eso lleva consigo.

I loved the reading experience on this reread - a really intriguing novel, with some fantastic characters and twists and turns. I'm still deciding how I feel about Wilkie Collins but I do love his writing an awful lot.

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The Moonstone was published in 1868 and is considered by most people to be the first detective novel. Given the novels place in the history of the genre, that alone should put this book on most people's reading lists. To sweeten the pot, the plot is compelling, the last hundred pages I couldn't have put the book down for anything. I was caught up in the case and wanted to find out the why and the who in the mysterious circumstances surrounding the MOONSTONE.

The novel is narrated by several different people. My favorite was Gabriel Betteredge, the head servant at the Verinder house, who becomes a reluctant Watson for Detective Cuff during the investigation. He is a man convinced in the spiritual guidance of Robinson Crusoe and believes that any disruption in his life can be explained by reading and interpreting passages from his dogeared copy of Defoe's classic.

"In this anxious frame of mind, other men might have ended by working themselves up into a fever; I ended in a different way. I lit my pipe, and took a turn at Robinson Crusoe."

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Betteredge is a man of his age and his views on women I found so ridiculous as to actually laugh out loud.

"It is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women-if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn't their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first, and think afterwards; it's the fault of the fools who humour them."

Despite his archaic views, Betteredge proves to be a good assistant to the enigmatic Sergeant Cuff. Cuff's eyes had such intensity, "looking as if they expected something more from you than you were aware of yourself." Wilkie Collins based his character Sergeant Cuff on a real celebrated Victorian Detective Inspector Jack Whicher.

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Sergeant Cuff is summoned from London to investigate the disappearance of the Moonstone, and despite the reluctance of the household to help him in his investigations, he does come up with a theory (kept from us) that proves in the final pages of the book that he is worthy of his reputation. Cuff is as equally interested in the rose gardens (he has strong opinions) as he is in the crime he is investigating. "grass walkways never gravel" Collins does a great job putting flesh on the bones of the characters. We learn more about every major character than is necessary for the advancement of the plot. By the end of the novel I had the feeling that I was not only closing the cover on a great book, but also leaving behind some dear friends.

Another narrator, that I was not fond of, in fact, she made my skin crawl is Drusilla Clack. A cousin of the family, Drusilla, with her tendency to eavesdrop and make herself in all ways intrusive on her family and "friends" is a born again christian. The novel is set in 1848 and the term born again was not in use until much later, but she fits the profile. She was determined to save everyone and carried about her person tracts of her hero Miss Jane Ann Stamper. Once she has invaded a house she would leave tracts scattered about in places where people would eventually find them, and hopefully receive the edification that Drusilla felt they needed.

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She seemed like this on first appearances.

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But like Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer she would pounce on people, not for blood, but for a chance to save their immortal souls.


As I have mentioned, all the characters are well developed and Drusilla is no exception. She is a person, that after a previous encounter, you would go to great lengths to keep her from buttonholing you again.

This book delivers. You will not be disappointed. If I read it again I will put on a kettle of good English tea, light some candles, and tuck myself into an armchair, suspending myself as well as I can back into a Victorian age. I had such a great time I will certainly be reading more Wilkie Collins.

"You are welcome to be as merry as you please over everything else I have written. But when I write of Robinson Crusoe, by the Lord it's serious-and I request you to take it accordingly!"

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This was a read that was quite unexpected. I am familiar with Wilkie Collins’ work and have enjoyed The Woman in White but I had no idea how much I was going to love The Moonstone!

Wilkie Collins was a law student before he became an author. His friendship with mentor Charles Dickens played an important part in his success having collaborated together on several plays and stories. Dickens published the novel in his magazine, All the Year Round in serial fashion. The Moonstone is often thought to be the first English detective novel introducing Detective Cuff to readers in 1868. Victorian readers would have been utterly captivated by the compelling plot and the intriguing case of the mystery surrounding the Moonstone.

The Moonstone will have its vengeance yet on you and yours!

The story is told by various characters through letters that they write. After the gem has been missing for 2 years, Franklin Blake has entrusted each individual to help in getting to the bottom of the mystery. Each narrative presents its writer as responsible for getting at the truth of the mystery via the epistolary style. The longest narrative is written by Gabriel Betteredge, the overseer of the Verinder house. He catches the “detective fever” brought on by our significant Detective Cuff. Betteredge also seeks out life’s guidance from his well-worn and loved copy of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. It’s as if he gains some type of spiritual direction from the passages he reads and interprets. And this added personality quirk is just a joy to take part in. Betteredge finds joy in his favorite reading material and it translates to readers in the same way. He has some rather archaic views on women but I didn’t find them derogatory (some might) but just a quirk of his personality.

We also get the perspective of Miss Drusilla Clack who is a self-righteous Christian lady who is a cousin to the Verinder’s. Her eavesdropping tendencies and mission to save everyone from their sins with tracts that she disperses about the house for the purpose of edifying those who found and read them provide some humor. Her charity work for the Mother’s-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society puts a satirical spin on her character. I found her a pitiable character for the way she just doesn’t give up her personal mission of soul saving. I just thought she could have used a bit of grace in her delivery.

Miss Rachel Verinder is the benefactor of the moonstone and a very independent minded young woman. We get to know her character through the narration of the other characters quite well and question some of her behaviors; however, patience in getting to the end of the complex story and plot that Collins has created will shine light on her stubbornness eventually. We never view the story from her perspective though.

As the plot unfolds, readers will wonder whether the moonstone has cursed the Verinder family. But there is a lot going for this story. There is romance, innocent characters wrongfully suspected, sinister Hindoo men lurking about, an English manor house setting and one of the most intriguing characters, the doctor’s assistant, Ezra Jennings who brings an enigmatic atmosphere to the narrative. And finally, the fact that we get to meet the eccentric rose-loving Detective Cuff makes this a perfect reason to pick up this story. And if you think you are a regular armchair detective and will be able to figure this mystery out, beware, Collins’ outdoes himself with keeping readers guessing until the very end!