The Black Robe - Wilkie Collins

I've read a few Wilkie Collins novels now and I like to think that I know his style as a novelist. I don't think there will even be anything that will replace the Woman in White as my favourite though and this is no exception.

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The Black Robe isn't a bad story and I think if you're already a Wilkie fan then you won't be disappointed as you'll probably already be familar with the formla (lost love, misunderstandings and a bought of will-writing). However, if it's the first of his novels you've picked to read then I don't think you've picked the best one to start with :)

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The plot is very involved as always with lots of things happening to influence the characters in many ways. You get the strong impression from this story that Collins was not a fan of of the Catholic church. I think Father Benwell is one of the most manipulative and despicable characters I've ever come across and I had hoped that he might get his comeupance at the end of the story - but alas, Collins leaves him to continue his exploiuts in the name of redemtion and for the good of the catholic church (you can probably tell I've not got much time for religion either!). Only good kind-hearted Penrose manages to fly the flag for good religious values. He is one of the lvliest characters I've come across in a long time.

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When the story opens Romayne is involved in a duel which results in the death of his opponent. Unfortunatley the duellists younger brother looks on as his sibling is shot dead and subsequently goes mad from the shock - something Romayne can never forgive himself for. So on his return to England he moves back home to Vange Abbey where he is haunted by cries of distress from the younger brother. Then he meets Stella, they marry and he feels that he will finally be able to temper his demons. Quite possibly he would have managed this had it not been for Father Benwell and his quest to return Vange Abbey to the Catholic church. He drives a wedge between husband and wife and in the end manages to convert Romayne and whisk him off to Rome to become a priest -leaving his pregnant wife behind (although to be fair, he is not aware that Stella is pregnant). Romayne strikes me as a very complicated charaacter. At times he is strong-willed and defiant, at others he is weak-willed and easily led astray.

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Will write more later :)

No Name - Wilkie Collins

I was given this book for Christmas by a good friend of mine and this old edition was published in the early 20th century. I’m not the kind of girl who just likes to collect old books purely because they are old. It has to be something that I want to read – and anything by Collins will fall into this category. The pleasure I get from reading old books is wondering who else has read it before me. Who were they? When did they read it? Did they enjoy it? How did it come to be in my hands? I love thinking about all these questions almost as much as I enjoy actually reading the story.
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No Name is another complex and intricate story from the marvellous imagination of Wilkie Collins. As with everything I read by Collins, I have to compare it to my favourite story The Woman in White, and again I have to say that I don’t think this one can surpass that either. Having said that, No Name is a very, very good story (it’s just that The Woman in White will always be great in my opinion!). Collins’s characters are, as always, well rounded, deep and believable.
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The story tells of the misfortunes of the Vanstone family, focusing primarily on the characters of Magdalen and Norah; two sisters. The Vanstone family live a well-off and comfortable existence in their family home of Combe-Raven in Somerset. One morning, on receiving a letter from New Orleans, Mr and Mrs Vanstone immediately make arrangements to travel to London offering no viable explanation for their visit except for reasons relating to Mrs Vanstone’s health as she is expecting a baby. After two weeks, they return and life at Combe-Raven returns to normal. Magdalen and her older sister Norah are as much complete opposite in character as they are able to be. Magdalen is the extrovert character; noisy, passionate, colourful and opinionated. Norah in comparison is quiet, reserved and accepts the course that life directs her in without question.
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A few weeks later Mr Vanstone is killed in a railway accident while returning on business, and Mrs Vanstone, reeling from the shock of her husband’s death and compounded by her ill-health and delicate pregnancy, dies a few days later. Her premature son also dies a few minutes later. Trust me, this son is significant! Distraught Norah and Magdalen, burdened enough by their triple death of their parents and brother, then find out that they have inadvertently and unintentionally disinherited by their fathers will. As it turns out, Mr and Mrs Vanstone were not married at the times when Magdalen and Norah were born because Mr Vanstone was married to someone else. The mysterious letter from New Orleans informed him that his wife has died and the equally mysterious errand to London was undertaken so that Mr and Mrs Vanstone could actually be married without anyone else’s knowledge. Thus they returned to Combe-Raven, legitimately husband and wife and no one was any the wiser. However, Mr Vanstone becoming married makes any provisions he made for his two daughters through a Will inconsequential until he makes a new one to reflect that he has married otherwise the law will automatically transfer his estate to his wife and any legitimate children he had. This is fails to do before his death and subsequently the estate passes from next-of-kin to next-of-kin until it ends up in the hands of his estranged brother. Although it was always Mr Vanstone’s intention to leave his estate to his two daughters, his brother does not honour this and casts Norah and Magdalen into the world with nothing but one hundred pounds each, and in the eyes of the law they are ‘nobody’s children’.
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The rest of the story follows Magdalen as she attempts to reclaim her father’s fortune in any way she can. She is essentially a good character, driven to extremes by the forces of her circumstances. She becomes unrelenting in her struggle to retrieve what has been lost to her and Norah, the resulting breakdown in her character is both heart-breaking and dreadful to witness. Fortunately there is a happy resolution for all (yay!), in a manner not anticipated by anyone, least of all Magdalen. The circumstances in which the Combe-Raven money is returned to Norah and Magdalen highlights the fight of good over evil. The suffering which Magdalen inflicts upon herself and others in the tunnel-vision of her plight is brought into sharp contrast at the end by the actions and nature of her elder sister.
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I think that one of reasons that I didn’t enjoy this as much as The Woman in White or The Moonstone is because I’m a bit of an old romantic and a sucker for a love story. But even three quarters of the way through this there was still no sign of a worthy suitor for Magdalen’s affections. In fact, it’s very hard plant your flag of support in completely in Magdalen’s corner anyway, such are the lengths of cunning and scheming her ideas go to. However, there is no doubt that her naturally fiery nature and the circumstances under which her fortune was stripped from her elicit sympathy to her cause. You can’t help but hope that she eventually gets what she had worked so hard and sacrificed so much for.
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I have read in the past that Collins, being taught in law himself, was not in agreement with the class system evidently apparent in Victorian times and the sympathy with which he treats his characters of all levels in his novels is communicative of this. The laws then which led innocent children to pay the price of their parents mistakes was obviously something he endeavoured to bring to the readers attention when he wrote No Name. The barbarousness (is that a word?!) of a law which cast out children who were evidently loved by their parents because it saw them as ‘illegitimate’ was clearly something which he had strong feelings on. No Name is a very good story in which the inadequacies of a time and a class society evident in the 19th Century are highlighted extremely well. A definite good read for anyone who loves an intricate plot full of twists and turns.

The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

Currently I am ensconsed at my mum's house in Ireland for Christmas and New Year. Being in the middle of nowhere there is one convenience of modern living yet to reach their peaceful and idyllic hamlet: Broadband!

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I love this book. I know I’ve said it a million times before, but I do. The plot of the story is so complex and ingenious you can’t help but get drawn into it. Coupled with this are the characters within which are brilliant and which introduces to us two of the finest characters I think to be created in Victorian fiction.
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Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote a musical (yes I know, a musical!) based on this novel by Collins and I remember going to see it in London in 2005. The ending of the story and the discovery of the treachery involved is so complex I was mostly intrigued as to how Lloyd Webber would present this on stage. I would say that if you haven’t read the book then go and give the musical a look. However, if you have read the book and if you love it as much as I do, then don’t bother. Lloyd Webber gets around the difficulties in presenting this kind of fiction on stage by completely rewriting the end of the story. Sacrilege!
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Anyway, back to the book. I will try and give you the basic plot (which is hard not only because it is so involved but also because every time I read it discover something new!) with giving too much away and without confusing you, or me for that matter…
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Walking on his way back to London from Hampstead a poor drawing master (class and status is very important in this book) named Walter Hartwright meets a woman all dressed in white. She asks his for assistance in getting back to town as she has just escaped from an asylum near by. Walter agrees to help her after ascertaining that she has been falsely imprisoned there by a man whom she will only reveal as having the title of Baronet. They walk back to London together where he sees her safely on her way to a friend's house.

The next day Walter travels to Limmeridge House in Cumberland where he has secured temporary employment as a teacher of drawing to two young sisters. Enter Laura Fairlie and (the amazing marvelous) Marian Halcombe. These two are half sisters with their mother in common hence the difference in surname. Walter tells Marian of his adventure with the mysterious woman in white because she had mentioned Limmeridge (and Mrs Fairlie) to him on their walk back to London as being a place she had been happy in her childhood. Marian resolves to try and identify this woman by scouring her mother's letters for any reference to her as a child and finally concludes that her name is Anne Catherick.

In a nutshell, Walter and Laura fall in love but 20 year old Laura is unfortunately already engaged to 45 year old Sir Percival Glyde (Baronet!) by the wishes of her father and the promise she made to him on his deathbed. The only reason ages are important here is to reveal that Laura, being not yet of age is not legally able to speak for herself, and also that it is unlikely she will die before Sir Percival since he is so much older than her.

Laura is sent a letter by Anne alluding to Glyde’s unsavory characteristics and conduct but as Laura is tied by her promise she can’t claim her release from Glyde. Walter tracks down Anne in Limmeridge churchyard (it’s a long story) and is struck by the extraordinary likeness that she and Laura share. Laura tries to entice Glyde into releasing her from the marriage by telling him that she is in love with Walter and that her heart will always belong to him. This however, only seems to make Glyde love her more (sneaky bastard). It is worth mentioning here that Glyde has cunningly devised a marriage settlement whereby he will stand to inherit all of Laura’s fortune in the event of her death before him if she leaves no children… hmmm…! Seeing that there is no future for himself and Laura, Walter sails off to Central America and Laura marries Sir Percival to begin her miserable life as Lady Glyde.

Forward six month later and Laura returns from Europe with her new husband to reside with her sister Marian at the rundown Glyde property, Blackwater Park. Here they are all joined by the other great character in this story: Count Fosco, whose wife the Countess is also Laura’s aunt. The plot thickens. Count Fosco is the evil genius of the story and after his introduction the true level of deceit and betrayal against Laura, Anne and Marian begins… (although he can’t be that clever if he thought he could get one over not just one woman, but three of them – one of them being the remarkable Marian!). However, the sheer level of Count Fosco’s Machiavellian quality is brilliantly presented in his character by Collins. He is the puppet-master of them all.

I’ve totally skimmed over the plot, and haven't even tried to explain the second half to you... but it’s so utterly involving and intricate that I think anyone would be hard-pushed to give you a complete guide to the ins and outs of the story without simply re-writing the whole thing in the process. To be honest this kind of sensationalist fiction (of which this book is widely considered to be the first of its kind) is something that you really have to sit down and read in order to be able to appreciate the true brilliance of it. I have yet to come across an adaptation in film, theatre or television that truly does it justice.

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The opening lines of the story are among my favorites:

“This is the story of what a Woman's patience can endure and what a Man's resolution can achieve”

And one of my other favorite lines is found in Mr Gilmore’s narrative when preparing to address Marian. He wisely states that:

“No sensible man ever engages, unprepared, in a fencing match of words with a woman.”

Excellent advice!

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Trust me. It’s a really, really great book. The Woman in White and I are off to get a room…

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

I picked this book up purely because it was written by Wilkie Collins who also wrote The Woman in White; one of my most favourite books of all time. The Moonstone is written in the same style as The Woman in White in that it is made up of narrative by the characters within the book who are associated with events at that time. It's an interesting way of telling the story being more formal than the usual character driven monologues - but then it was written in the 19th century so the language and style of the characters reflects this era. It's essentially an old fashioned detective story with the characters all providing statements regarding the events which occur along the way. The plot is complicated at times but mostly I managed to keep up with it - the biggest difficultly when reading these old classics is getting your head around the language in the first place and getting used to the differences in sentence construction.
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The plot focuses on a large yellow diamond called the Moonstone which is stolen from an Indian shine during the British occupation of the territory in all together unsavory circumstances (much like the world-renowned Orlov Diamond). The diamond makes it's way back to England - but not without it's followers. Three Indians who have devoted their lives to returning the diamond to it's rightful position are also in pursuit. When the owner dies he leaves the diamond to his niece, Rachel on her birthday... and in doing so also leaves the threat associated with it. But the same night the diamond is stolen from the house and even after all the inhabitants have been questioned, it's whereabouts remains a mystery. And so the plot follows through with the characters giving their version of events as they happen which ultimately leads to a very unexpected conclusion!

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I really enjoyed reading this book. The story was really good and I had a hard time putting it down. The characters that Collin's has created are great. Some of them are so funny - especially Betteridge, always accompanied by his own version of the holy bible! And Miss Clack - the deliciously irritating bible-toting busy-body. And the end of the story finishes in a way I never anticipated with a good old fashioned plot twist. I can't quite say that this book has managed to usurp the greatness of The Woman in White in my heart, but it's definitely lodged itself there as another favourite due to it's pure genius. Gotta love Wilkie Collins :)