Showing posts with label Wilkie Collins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wilkie Collins. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

The Woman in White 1Star DNF@10%

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission


Title: The Woman in White
Series: ----------
Author: Wilkie Collins
Rating: 1 of 5 Stars / DNF@10%
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 900 / 90
Words: 246K / 25K






If you read the synopsis down below, you’ll see this sounds like a great story and I would fully agree with you.

But Collins writing and his choice of characters is beyond what I can stand. Hartright is another young spineless jellyfish and the prose is purple enough that I immediately thought of The Boy and the Peddler of Death, a book I excoriated back in ‘15. There was NO WAY I was going to force myself to read 810 more pages of this drivel.

This one star rating is not for the story at all. I almost feel bad in fact because I think the story could have been really interesting and something I would have loved. But this Rating is Bookstooge’s Final Judgement on Wilkie Collins. He has been judged, found wanting and I assign him to the dreaded Authors to Avoid limbo where he will languish until I die, knowing he was a complete failure. Writhe in agony you miserable excrescence on the literary world, for one day you will be completely forgotten and nobody will have to suffer dealing with your complete tripe anymore.

★☆☆☆☆ DNF@10%


From Wilkie-Collins.info


Walter Hartright, a young drawing master, has secured a position in Cumberland on the recommendation of his old friend Professor Pesca, a political refugee from Italy. While walking home from Hampstead on his last evening in London, Hartright meets a mysterious woman dressed in white, apparently in deep distress. He helps her on her way but later learns that she has escaped from an asylum. The next day he travels north to Limmeridge House. The household comprises Mr Frederick Fairlie, a reclusive valetudinarian; Laura Fairlie, his niece; and Marian Halcombe, her devoted half-sister. Hartright finds that Laura bears an astonishing resemblance to the woman in white, called Anne Catherick. The simple-minded Anne had lived for a time in Cumberland as a child and was devoted to Laura's mother, who first dressed her in white.

Hartright and Laura fall in love. Laura, however, has promised her late father that she will marry Sir Percival Glyde, and Marian advises Walter to leave Limmeridge. Anne Catherick, after sending a letter to Laura warning her against Glyde, meets Hartright who is convinced that Glyde was responsible for shutting her in the asylum. Laura and Glyde marry in December 1849 and travel to Italy. Hartright also leaves England, joining an expedition to Honduras.

After their honeymoon, Sir Percival and Lady Glyde return the following June to his family estate in Hampshire, Blackwater Park. They are accompanied by Glyde's friend, Count Fosco, who married Laura's aunt, Eleanor Fairlie. Marian Halcombe is also living at Blackwater and learns that Glyde is in financial difficulties. Sir Percival unsuccessfully attempts to bully Laura into signing a document which would allow him to use her marriage settlement of £20,000. Marian now realises that Fosco is the true villain and is plotting something more sinister, especially as Anne has reappeared, promising to reveal to Laura a secret which will ruin Glyde. Marian eavesdrops on Fosco and Glyde but is caught in the rain. She collapses with a fever which turns to typhus. While she is ill Laura is tricked into travelling to London. Her identity and that of Anne Catherick are then switched. Anne Catherick dies of a heart condition and is buried in Cumberland as Laura, while Laura is drugged and placed in the asylum as Anne Catherick. When Marian recovers and visits the asylum hoping to learn something from Anne Catherick, she finds Laura, supposedly suffering from the delusion that she is Lady Glyde.

Marian bribes the attendant and Laura escapes. Hartright has safely returned and the three live together in obscure poverty, determined to restore Laura's identity. Exposing the conspiracy depends on proving that Laura's journey to London took place after the date on the death certificate. While looking for evidence, Hartright discovers Glyde's secret. Several years earlier, Glyde had forged the marriage register at Old Welmingham Church to conceal his illegitimacy. Glyde attempts to destroy the register entry, but the church vestry catches fire and he perishes in the flames. Hartright then discovers that Anne was the illegitimate child of Laura's father, which accounts for their resemblance.

Hartright hopes that Pesca can identify Fosco but to his surprise finds that the Count is terrified when he recognises Pesca as a fellow member of a secret society. Hartright now has the power to force a written confession from Fosco and Laura's identity is restored. Hartright and Laura have married and, on the death of Frederick Fairlie, their son becomes the Heir of Limmeridge.



Tuesday, December 05, 2023

Basil 2.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Basil
Series: ----------
Author: Wilkie Collins
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 473
Words: 128K







This was head and shoulders far above Antonina. I was never bored reading this. And yet. Yes, that doomful “And yet”….

Basil is a spineless, cowardly, weak willed, weak minded nincompoop. He’s not a villain by any means. I’ve often wondered how stupid people go through life, what lens are they viewing it through? I feel like this novel answers that. He is constantly “struck dumb” by people asking him questions. Questions he should already have the answers to since he’s taking certain lines of action. It would be like me asking you why you just drank a gallon of gasoline when you know you are not an automobile and that gasoline is poison to humans. If you just looked at me with a cowlike expression on your face and stuttered, you’d be a stand-in for Basil, hands down. This particularly galling to me as he is a very articulate writer and never even THINKS to write down answers ahead of time to some questions he knows will be coming his way. He is also extremely passive. His older brother swoops in near the end of the novel to help him out and Basil mentions nothing to him about a madman who is out to kill him. He keeps absolutely silent on the issue. His reasoning for doing so are as fatuous as anything he had done previously. I wanted to wring his neck and kept hoping that the madman WOULD kill him, just to rid the world of one more stupid idiot. Sadly, that’s not how things turned out.

Collins is at his wordiest here. There was one time that a paragraph went on for a page and a half and part way through I realized it was all one sentence. No semi-colons, just lots of commas and parenthetical thoughts tossed in to stretch things out. Ain’t nobody got time for that!

I’m going to read The Woman in White next and if that doesn’t really impress me, I’ll have to think long and hard about reading any more Collins. As a reader, I feel that I can do better.

★★✬☆☆


From Wilkie-Collins.info

Basil is the younger son of a proud, stern father and comes of an ancient, noble family. He has a devoted younger sister, Clara, and a wild but good-natured older brother, Ralph. Travelling home, on impulse by omnibus, Basil falls in love at first sight with Margaret Sherwin, a linen-draper's daughter. He follows her home to the newly-built suburbs north of Regent's Park and, after contriving a meeting, asks her father for permission to marry; but because of his own father's certain opposition, the marriage should be kept secret. Mr Sherwin agrees on condition that the marriage takes place within the week but is not consummated for one year, since Margaret is only just seventeen. The delay will give Basil time to persuade his father to accept the marriage, and he cannot be forced to withdraw from it. The marriage duly takes place and Basil spends the next few months visiting Margaret every evening under the supervision of the mildly deranged Mrs Sherwin. He tries unsuccessfully to improve Margaret's mind and after overhearing two of her tantrums begins to doubt her character.

Sherwin's confidential clerk, Robert Mannion, returns from a business trip to France. Mannion's previous background is cloaked in secrecy and he has a strange power over the family. Nevertheless, he professes friendship and uses his influence for Basil's benefit. After a strained visit to his father's country house, Basil returns to find both Margaret and Mannion changed. On the evening before his year's 'probation' is completed, Basil is disconcerted that Margaret has gone to a party and will be escorted home by Mannion. He decides to collect her himself but sees her leave early with his rival. Basil follows them to an hotel and through a thin partition wall hears Mannion seduce Margaret. Basil waits and attacks Mannion, hurling him to the ground with such force that he is permanently disfigured and loses the sight of one eye. Basil collapses into delirium.

On recovering, he realises that Margaret is as much to blame as Mannion, despite threatening letters from Sherwin defending her. Basil confesses the ignoble marriage to his father who disowns him, tearing his name from the record in the family Bible. Mannion writes from hospital, revealing his secret past. His father was a gentleman who lived beyond his means. His patron was Basil's father, who refused to intervene to prevent his being hanged for forgery. Mannion had lived a miserable existence under assumed names until a friend arranged employment with Sherwin where he made himself indispensable. He had watched Margaret develop and despite her deceitful nature regarded her as his prize. Basil's marriage had compounded the family offence and Mannion resolved to take revenge by ruining his happiness and reputation.

Ralph returns from the Continent and visits Sherwin to buy his silence. He fortuitously obtains a letter written by Mannion which confirms Margaret's guilt. Margaret, visiting Mannion in hospital, contracts typhus from which she dies. Basil sees her when she is at the point of death, forgives her and leaves London for Cornwall. Mannion forces him to leave the fishing village where he is staying and confronts him on the cliff tops. While gloating over his revenge, Mannion falls to his death on the rocks below. The shock causes Basil to collapse. He is brought back to London by Ralph and Clara and reconciled with his father. After writing his history, Basil retires to the country to live quietly with Clara.



Sunday, October 15, 2023

Antonina 2Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Antonina
Series: ----------
Author: Wilkie Collins
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Historical Fiction
Pages: 629
Words: 167K







For anyone who doesn’t know, Wilkie Collins is known for writing The Moonstone, sometimes called the first detective novel. He was also a contemporary and friend to Charles Dickens. As you should know, Dickens was known as quite the wordy author, always using 5 or 6 words where 1 would have sufficed. Some find this trait of his insufferable, some love it. I happen to love it. When it is done by Dickens. This was also Collins’ debut novel and in it he tries to out-Dickens Dickens. If 1 word would suffice, Collins crams in 10-15. Usually of the most purplish prose possible too. I found it insufferable.

What is worse, this was also boring. Rome is surrounded by a barbarian horde of goths and everyone just sits there and starves to death. Collins can barely be bothered to scare up some drama for us.

The struggle between Paganism and Christianity, as portrayed, also betrayed Collins inherent apathy for either. He was no believer in anything. It should have had some real pathos, some “zing” instead of two old men living their lives out according to their principles.

This was the first book in one of those “Complete Author X” collections. Bad choice, even though I know they’re going alphabetically. If I hadn’t already read Moonstone and had my interest whetted by that, and this was my first Collins, I’d have tossed it into the rubbish heap and not read anything more by him. Really hope the next book is a little more interesting.

★★☆☆☆


From Wilkie-Collins.info and Bookstooge.blog

The plot revolves around two separate but related struggles. That of the old pagan and new Christian religions, seen as equally destructive, embodied in the opposing characters of Ulpius and Numerian; and that of the strong figure of the Goth, Goisvintha, (modelled on Norna in Scott's The Pirate) seeking revenge against the weak heroine, Antonina.

In the Rome of 408 AD, the young Antonina lives with her father Numerian, zealous in his aims to restore the Christian faith to its former ideals. Numerian's steward, Ulpius, brought up in the old religion, secretly lives only to restore the forbidden gods of pagan sacrifice. Vetranio, their wealthy neighbour, has designs on the innocent Antonina. When they are surprised by Numerian in an apparently compromising situation, Antonina flees outside the city walls just before Rome is blockaded by the encircling army of the Goths.

Antonina is captured by the chieftain, Hermanric, who falls in love with her. His sister, Goisvintha, was the sole survivor of a Roman massacre in which her children perished and has vowed revenge on Rome and its people. She attempts to kill Antonina but is prevented by Hermanric who allows Antonina to escape. During the weeks of the siege, she lives in a deserted farmhouse, visited nightly by Hermanric. Goisvintha betrays her brother to the Huns who kill him, while Antonina escapes for a second time.

Ulpius, meanwhile, has discovered a breach in the city wall and attempts to betray Rome to Alaric in exchange for his destruction of the Christian religion. Alaric is interested only in humbling his enemies into surrender and seizing a large tribute of gold. Returning towards the city, Ulpius discovers Antonina and accompanies her to Rome where she finds her overjoyed but starving father. Antonina begs the last morsels of food from Vetranio at a macabre and suicidal 'Banquet of Famine', preventing him from making a funeral pyre of his palace.

Antonina is stabbed but recovers, her father stays alive, Ulpias dies, Goisvintha goes completely insane and Vetranio retires to the country side.