خود داستان اینقدر جذاب هست و ترجمه آنقدر لحن‌گردانی دارد که چاپ بد و پرغلط و طرح جلد نامناسب کتاب را ببخشیم. ترجمه‌ی منوچهر بدیعی در این کتاب از تمام ترجمه‌های چاپ‌شده‌اش بهتر است. اول که لحن و مصطلحات و نواخت روایت هر فصل را متناسب با حال‌و‌هوای شخصیت راوی آن ساخته —چه وکیلی سودازده باشد چه خدمتکاری که نستعلیق حرف می‌زند چه دختر عفیف متشرع مجردی؛ دوم که هر کدام اینها در ابتدای کار سعی در پنهان کردن نیات و کنش‌هایی دارند که بدون اشراف بر این ظرائف ترجمه می‌توانست نفهمیدنی و غلط از آب در بیاید و اینجاست که معلوم می‌شود مترجم درجه‌یک رمان مثل ابوالحسن نجفی یا دریابندری باید قصه‌شناس هم باشد؛ سوم هم اینکه در بعضی ترجمه‌های پیشین گاهی سطح لغات متن ناهمخوان میشد ولی اینجا در حد مونولوگهایی زیبا و تئاتری به فراخور آدمها پرداخته شده و آدم کیف می‌کند.

n  «Questi uomini aspetteranno l’occasione giusta pazienti come gatti, e la coglieranno feroci come tigri.»n
Nel 1868, Wilkie William Collins (1824 – 1889) pubblica The Moonstone. Il romanzo esce a puntate a Londra su All the Year Round, il cui direttore è l’amico Charles Dickens.
È una narrazione a più voci, che racconta di un gioiello sacro rubato dopo la conquista di Seringapatam nel 1799, e trafugato in Inghilterra da un ufficiale infedele. Tre bramini, che hanno seguito il colonnello Herncastle in Inghilterra, tenteranno di recuperare la pietra e riportarla in India, al tempio del dio della Luna.
Il 21 giugno 1948, nello Yorkshire, presso la villa della famiglia Verinder, per il suo diciottesimo compleanno, Rachel, riceverà in regalo il gioiello......
Attraverso il racconto di alcuni protagonisti conosceremo i fatti e faremo conoscenza con una incredibile galleria di personaggi. Conosceremo così Lady Julia Verinder; Gabriel Betteredge, anziano servitore di casa Verinder e appassionato lettore di Robinson Crusoe; Franklin Blake e Godfrey Ablewhite, cugini di Rachel; Rosanna Spearman, cameriera, ex ladra, perdutamente innamorata di Franklin Blake; Miss Drusilla Clack, fanatica evangelizzatrice; il flemmatico Richard Cuff, sergente di Scotland Yard; Mr. Murthwaite, intrepido esploratore; il dottor Thomas Candy e il suo inappuntabile aiutante Ezra Jennings; e ancora tanti altri personaggi, tutti impeccabili rappresentanti della moralità Vittoriana.
Oltre cinquecento godibilissime pagine di avventura, intrighi e storie d’amore...
Cogliendo il graditissimo suggerimento di @Giò (https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...), sono andato a rivedere la prima puntata dello sceneggiato prodotto dalla rai nel ’72, e diretto da... (i vecchi lo ricorderanno, con un sorriso e tanta gratitudine) Anton Giulio Majano. Che meraviglia! Quando la Rai ancora ci... imparava le cose.
«Detto questo, è stato detto tutto. Signore e signori, mi inchino davanti a voi, e termino la storia»...

رواية بوليسية كلاسيكية نشرت منذ مائة وخمسون عاماً تقريباً، أقرب إلى أسلوب أجاثا كريستي الغامض المثير
تحكي عن حجر هندوسى مقدس سرقه لص إنجليزي برتبه كولونيل في نهاية القرن الثامن عشر وعاد به لإنجلترا
لتبدأ سلسلة من الحوادث الغامضة لورثته ومحاولة بعض الهنود إعادته للهند ولكن تنتهى الرواية نهاية مثيرة

3/5/2020: Once again a much-enjoyed classic mystery. Whew! I’d forgotten there were so many intricate details in this one! I don’t love it as dearly as The Woman in White, but it’s still an entertaining and twisty mystery that has a lot of neat to it.

Content: a few swears; suicide; murder; opium

More Interesting for Plot than People

Published in 1868, The Moonstone outsold Great Expectations. Yet Dickens is universally acknowledged the greater author today, and I’d assumed that Wilkie Collins was now just a literary footnote, notable as author of the first detective story, but scarcely worth reading for his own sake. The other day, however, I bragged to a friend that I was reading The Moonstone, but instead of congratulations all I got was: “You surely mean re-reading it”? Ouch!



The essence of the story is simple enough. A British officer steals a sacred diamond from an Indian idol. Years later, in accordance with his will, it is presented to a young lady, Rachel Verinder, on her eighteenth birthday. And the same night, it mysteriously disappears. Who is responsible? One of the house guests at the birthday party, or the three Brahmans who mysteriously appear, disguised as traveling jugglers? Fortunately, the Indians mainly lurk as a background threat, keeping the main focus on the English characters, both above and below stairs. And when the theft is followed by a suicide, more robberies, and a murder, the mysteries deepen and proliferate.



The novel is remarkable for its structure, being told in separate but linked narratives involving eleven different voices. Some of these are only a page or two; the longest, which covers everything from the preparations for the birthday through the failure of the first investigation, is 200 pages. The delight of this method is that it introduces us to a series of unreliable narrators who reveal as much about themselves as the story they are telling. For example, the narrator of that longest part, the old steward in the Verinder household, Gabriel Betteredge. He has already made one false start; here he is reluctantly acknowledging another:

n  I am asked to tell the story of the Diamond, and, instead of that, I have been telling the story of my own self. Curious, and quite beyond me to account for. I wonder whether the gentlemen who make a business and living out of writing books, ever find their own selves getting in the way of their subjects, like me? If they do, I can feel for them. In the meantime, here is another false start, and more waste of good writing-paper. What's to be done now? Nothing that I know of, except for you to keep your temper, and for me to begin it all over again for the third time.n

But amusing though he is, the amiable fuddy-duddy outstays his welcome. We are glad when the great detective from Scotland Yard, Sergeant Cuff (why only a sergeant?) arrives on the scene and dismisses the local man; even though his voice is filtered through Betteredge, he is still a fascinating character who deserves his place as the first of the great detectives in fiction.



The second part of the novel, which picks up the mystery after the interval of a year, is more interesting. This is partly because it moves faster, and partly because it involves many more narrators. The first of these, an impoverished spinster relation of the Verinders called Drusilla Clack, is a small comic masterpiece. Collins mercilessly parodies her evangelism, which makes her delusional about her own motivations and tone-deaf to the needs of others. As in this scene when her aunt, seeking comfort, has just told her that she is seriously ill:

nHere was a career of usefulness opened before me! […] I took my aunt in my arms—my overflowing tenderness was not to be satisfied, now, with anything less than an embrace. "Oh!" I said to her, fervently, "the indescribable interest with which you inspire me! Oh! the good I mean to do you, dear, before we part!" After another word or two of earnest prefatory warning, I gave her the choice of three precious friends, all plying the work of mercy from morning to night in her own neighbourhood; all equally inexhaustible in exhortation; all affectionately ready to exercise their gifts at a word from me. Alas! the result was far from encouraging. […]

How fair is it to judge The Moonstone by the later standards of the genre to which it gave rise? Not much, probably, yet it is hard not to do so. By those standards, Collins is guilty more than once of coloring outside the lines. He introduces a significant new character three-quarters of the way through. An important plot point is resolved through an implausible experiment involving psychology and drugs. Too many new facts are revealed only the last few dozen pages, without the benefit of real detection. And once more there will be recourse to those hovering Brahmans, although there is quite a poetic symmetry to the way Collins handles them.



But the real reason why I give this four stars rather than five is that Collins lacks the essential novelist’s ability to get us to care about his characters. His skill at sketching the foibles of his narrators does not extend to his protagonists. Rachel Verinder, for example, has two suitors (both her cousins), Franklin Blake and Godfrey Ablewhite. We are clearly expected to rejoice or despair at the progress or setbacks of both these romances. But Rachel, despite others’ praise of her, seems petty, spoiled, and willful. And, though for different reasons, neither Franklin nor Godfrey comes across as admirable, or even particularly interesting. Think how quickly Dickens can get you to fall for his heroines and feel for his heroes. If The Moonstone indeed outsold Great Expectations, it can only have been for its unusual plot. In his ability to fill a novel with interesting and lovable people, Dickens had Collins beat.

This was my second by Wilkie Collins. I finally got around to The Woman in White last year; I enjoyed The Moonstone every bit as much. They are both effectively mysteries, a genre to which I am not typically drawn, but I have found that Wilkie Collins is able to retain my interest in the mystery while also engaging me in the lives of the characters and the period in which the novel is set. He focuses in these two novels on the upper class of English society. It is always a bit of a shock reading about people who did not need to work for a living, and often did not work.

Some of the characters in The Moonstone are much more richly drawn than others. Gabriel Betteredge, Sergeant Cuff and Ezra Jennings were my favorites. While there were some interesting female characters, I did not find them as multi-faceted as my favorites. I found the one major twist in the story somewhat unbelievable, but in the interest of enjoying the story, I had to let this go. I also realized that this twist might have been more believable in the 19th century.

I find I must be in the right mood for English fiction from the 19th century. It can provide a good story and interesting characters, but if I read too much of it, I become bored. Better to space it out. The Moonstone was a most enjoyable detour, and I definitely recommend it.

3.5

Le ultime 200 pagine hanno salvato il libro.

NEWTs 2019: A in Astronomy

We had our breakfasts - whatever happens in a house, robbery or murder, it doesn't matter, you must have your breakfast.

Thus began an entire genre. I loved The Woman in White a number of years ago, and was also fully enthralled by The Moonstone. It's regarded as the first English detective novel, and it's such a good, fat, satisfying read. The excitement of a really great Victorian sensation novel - a missing diamond, huge dollops of Orientalism, an illicit affair, opium, quicksand - and some quite modern plot devices, in particular the skillful use of multiple narrators. Faithful old family servant Gabriel Betteredge is a treat, and I was sad when his section was done, but the ensuing Miss Clack was hilarious and had me re-reading her bon mots aloud. What a delightful book.

3.5 stars
A fun mystery, which would make a great limited series, but too long to really earn 5 stars (or even a whole-hearted 4 stars in my case). This book is quite wordy and long-winded, and it takes half the book to get to the heart of the action, but the writing is deliciously Victorian.

Gooseberry should definitely have his own detective series! Hoping a good writer will pick up his story and take the liberty of writing the young guy's tales.

A wonderful, classic detective novel. I loved the switching viewpoints! It was funny and fun and even though I guessed the culprit, the how and why left me baffled. Well worth reading!

The Moonstone was probably as much a study in characters as it was a detective story, because the narrative by half a dozen persons, albeit being very distinctive in tone and style, was written unnecessarily long and mendearing and most of the time had little to do with the central mystery, but more with the people themselves. It was skillfully done, still I couldn't help to sometimes jump over paragraphs. Perhaps if some of them hadn't irritated me so much with their annoying prejudices bordered on mysogny (I know, I know it's Victorian era, but Ms Clark's was insufferable and the butler's was not amusing to me), perhaps if the view taken on the native, original owners of the jewel who just wanted their sacred artifact stolen from them back as dark, sinister, alien thief, savage murderer, criminal, blabla was not overdone, maybe if the experiment to solve the mystery by the end made more sense, I might liked this first detective novel more. Well, at least the Indian people got their jewel back.

An Inside Job
26 March 2017

tI had no idea that this book existed until my bookclub decided to make it the book of the month. In fact I had never heard of Wilkie Collins until this book was mentioned in passing. As it turns out (or at least according to some of the members of my bookclub) Wilkie lived under the shadow of Charles Dickens. In fact Wilkie and Dickens were good friends, that is until they had a falling out, and Dickens went out of his way to trash the works of Wilkie (and vice versa – I guess we can work out who won). I'm not really all that sure of any of the details beyond that, namely because I can't be bothered looking it up, even though this statement seems to be based upon a rumour that I heard from another person. The other thing about Wilkins, and this book in particular, was that I had some trouble finding it in a bookshop and ended up having to order it in, only to wander into a secondhand bookshop a week later to see a copy of this book, and Woman in White sitting on the shelf – it always happens like that.

tSo, the Moonstone is about this huge diamond that is stolen from India and finds its way to England and into the possession of a wealthy young lady (who inherited it from her uncle, who had originally stolen it from India). On her eighteenth birthday party she proudly wears it, but later that night it goes missing, and suddenly the mystery as to what happened to the diamond and who stole it begins. However, unlike most detective stories that I have read, where the mystery is pretty much solved within 24 to 48 hours of it happening, it isn't and everybody goes home. However, a year later the hunt for the diamond begins again in ernst and the mystery is eventually solved, though not as we would expect it to be solved.

tApparently The Moonstone is the first ever detective novel, though there was a discussion as to whether Wilkie or Poe were the first to write in this specific style of genre (apparently Poe was first, but because his story was a short story Wilkie is attributed to having the first full length novel). However the interesting thing is that it doesn't necessarily set the standard for how the genre developed in the future, though as I have said numerous times in the past, the detective novel, or even crime fiction, isn't a genre that really catches my attention. I have tried to read Agatha Christie, and despite really enjoying And Then There Were None I wasn't able to get into any of the other novels of hers that I read (though I'll probably try a couple more but I am not rushing out to do so). As for Doyle, as I have also previously mentioned, while at first I really enjoyed Sherlock Holmes, as the series dragged on I become less and less enthralled with the character and the stories.

tThe thing is that in my mind the idea of the detective fiction is that it is a game between the author and the reader to see if they can actually solve the problem before everything is revealed at the end, however my Dad, who is an avid reader of the genre, suggests that this generally isn't the case. For instance the Butler never, ever actually does it, and if he does it is generally considered to be so clichéd that the book is tossed into the recycling bin before anybody else can pick it up and have their intelligence insulted. As for Agatha Christie, my Dad suggests that her conclusions are so contrived that it is almost impossible to work it out (for instance in one of the books it turned out that everybody did it, though I still hold to my theory that Miss Marple is the real criminal, it is just that she is so clever at being able to throw the scent off the trail and pin the crime onto somebody else that she is never ever suspected, let alone caught).

tMind you, when I read a detective novel I generally give up trying to solve the problem pretty quickly, namely because that isn't the reason why I read – if I wanted to solve problems I would go and try debugging computer programs, or even write my own, or have an extended session on Duolingo – to me novels aren't designed to solve problems, but rather to open up one's mind to other possibilities, and to explore these possibilities through sites like Goodreads, or even my own blog. The other thing is that I suspect this style of detective fiction is rather new and wasn't the way that the original authors of the genre intended it to be.

tThe other thing about The Moonstone is that it was surprisingly amusing, which also baffled me because I never considered classical literature to actually be funny. Mind you, they probably are quite amusing, it is just that the style of humour, and the subtle references, are something that we generally wouldn't understand. Okay, I have known, and even done so myself, people who have burst out laughing at the plays of Aristophanes, and I also note that we have a few Roman comedies available, however it seems as if for quite a while most pieces of literature were actually quite serious, but then again we do have Shakespeare so I guess I am just talking rubbish again.

tThe really amusing thing about this book was the character who swore by the book Robinson Crusoe, which I have to admit does have a tendency to poke fun at those of us who happen to be religious. In fact sometimes I wonder myself at the absurdity of putting one's faith in the writings of a group of people that lived thousands of years ago. In fact a lot of people completely write off the writings of the ancients in that as far as they are concerned, if it was written over a thousand years ago then it has absolutely no application to the world today. Personally, I would disagree, though I guess the whole idea of basing one's life around Robinson Crusoe is that there is a difference between somebody who simply blindly follows a religious text, and those who go out of their way to completely debunk the text only to discover that no matter how hard they try the text stands up to scrutiny. Mind you, this does eventually come down to the way that you go about debunking the text.

tAs for basing your life around Robinson Crusoe, well, I'm sure it is possible, but I'm not really going to give it a try. Maybe I'll just stick with Mr Men (though I hope I haven't lost the one that I thought I put in my bag this morning).