Wilkie Collins - The Woman in White

 

Annoyed with this book. It was 700+ pages long! The story wasn't all that complex and could have been told in under 500. 

At first I really liked the narrative structure, which is like the casebook/dossier format with letters and journals from different characters. But that was when the mystery was still a mystery. The titular woman in white, Anne Catherick, could have been a legitimately spooky character. I thought she was really in possession of a thrilling Secret, but [SPOILER] it turns out that she was just nuts. Boring.

The best character was Marian Halcombe. She was basically the brains of the outfit - piecing together her own investigations a la Mina Harker. I found it so dumb that the main character, Walter Hartright, fell in love with Marian's half-sister Laura. She's not exactly an imbecile but she's definitely thick. What a non-entity. I guess she was the epitome of Victorian femininity - pretty and vacant.

I grew to hate Walter Hartright. He was stupid and had lousy taste in women. And the fact that he's the hero of the story is super galling. Literally the only advantage he had was the freedom (as a man) to go around the country and stay at inns and talk to people. If Marian could do that she would have solved the case within 300 pages...

The Count is supposed to be the villain of the story, but it's hard to buy that. All he was guilty of, really, was manipulating people. He didn't even bother to kill anyone. Plus he was the only character who appreciated Marian. It's hard to find fault with that!

The plot twist, by the way, was just awful and unsatisfying. And there were so many things left unexplained. Like the dying spaniel! What happened there!?!? And why was the Count so crazy about birds? And all of Sir Percival's weird character was left unresolved. Are we seriously to believe that he's erratic simply because he wasn't [SPOILER] a real aristocrat? Pooh.