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msand3 's review for:
The Moonstone
by Wilkie Collins
The Moonstone represents everything that annoys me about Victorian literature. It is bloated, excessively wordy, and tries to generate a gripping plot while simultaneously offering too many trifling details. It feels as if Collins is trying to walk the line between literature and popular entertainment, but managing to bungle both. The novel is too light to be taken seriously, but also not quite sensational enough to qualify as a bit of fun guilty pleasure, such as one might find in gothic novels or the Challenger stories of Arthur Conan Doyle. And so, over the course of a year, I struggled through the various first-person narratives, realizing that the popularity of these types of novels was most likely due to their episodic nature and serialized publication schedule. If I had to wait a month or two before getting to the next narrative, then the reading experience may have been more tolerable. As it was, I had to take long periods between reading just to make it through, so I ended up reading the novel close to how it would have been read in the 1860s.
I now understand why, as a 20-year-old college student, I didn't read Collins' The Law and the Lady in a class on criminality in British literature. It was a memorable course with amazing readings, but Collins' novel was the only one I tossed aside without finishing (or even coming close). I thought that reading The Moonstone would cause me to gain an appreciation for Collins and want to return to The Law and the Lady. Instead, I feel as if I've vindicated my 20-year-old self. Maybe one day in the next decade I'll give The Woman in White a shot.
Maybe.
I now understand why, as a 20-year-old college student, I didn't read Collins' The Law and the Lady in a class on criminality in British literature. It was a memorable course with amazing readings, but Collins' novel was the only one I tossed aside without finishing (or even coming close). I thought that reading The Moonstone would cause me to gain an appreciation for Collins and want to return to The Law and the Lady. Instead, I feel as if I've vindicated my 20-year-old self. Maybe one day in the next decade I'll give The Woman in White a shot.
Maybe.