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A review by aliwhaley
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
challenging
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.5
This book is well plotted with plenty of twists and turns and red herrings to keep you guessing, but why is the middle section so boring?
Weirdly, I think it suffers from over-thinking. I think Wilkie Collins was so determined to make sure there were no plot holes, and make sure that everything was explained and justified, that reading the tightly woven plot is like wading through mud.
E.g The time elapsed from deciding to give Franklin laudanum to actually doing it must be at least 50 pages, and all because Collins is double-securing all the explanations. There’s a whole paragraph on why Ezra doubles the dose from 20 to 40mg. WHY?!
It is a good book, it’s interesting to see how the detective genre began, especially with tropes like the detective’s sidekick narrator (Hastings / Dr Watson / Betteredge) represented here.
Also, I was surprised to see that (amongst all the casual racism / colourism and stereotyping in the book) Collins does at least acknowledge that English colonisers stealing diamonds from Indian people (and religious shrines) is a bad thing, and makes a curse stem from that crime.
I was surprised that the ‘happy ending’ was the diamond returning to India. I thought the book would resolve with Rachel getting her birthday diamond back. I was happy to see that the diamond went back to it’s shrine, although I think Collins had it return to India so that the curse would end, not so that the religious Indian people would have their shrine restored and their property back.
There is also something to be said for the characters. They were comedically larger than life in some places but that injected some humour into the book. I very much enjoyed Betteredge’s reliance on Robinson Crusoe. I got that the religious Miss Clack was a caricature intentionally, and that we were meant to hate her, but once that joke got old I found her chapters stopped me from wanting to pick the book back up.
Something I learnt from this book was about the existence of ‘visiting cards’ / ‘calling cards’ - a card that you leave at someone’s house if you call for them and they’re not in. I think this is where the criminal ‘calling card’ comes from
Weirdly, I think it suffers from over-thinking. I think Wilkie Collins was so determined to make sure there were no plot holes, and make sure that everything was explained and justified, that reading the tightly woven plot is like wading through mud.
E.g The time elapsed from deciding to give Franklin laudanum to actually doing it must be at least 50 pages, and all because Collins is double-securing all the explanations. There’s a whole paragraph on why Ezra doubles the dose from 20 to 40mg. WHY?!
It is a good book, it’s interesting to see how the detective genre began, especially with tropes like the detective’s sidekick narrator (Hastings / Dr Watson / Betteredge) represented here.
Also, I was surprised to see that (amongst all the casual racism / colourism and stereotyping in the book) Collins does at least acknowledge that English colonisers stealing diamonds from Indian people (and religious shrines) is a bad thing, and makes a curse stem from that crime.
I was surprised that the ‘happy ending’ was the diamond returning to India. I thought the book would resolve with Rachel getting her birthday diamond back. I was happy to see that the diamond went back to it’s shrine, although I think Collins had it return to India so that the curse would end, not so that the religious Indian people would have their shrine restored and their property back.
There is also something to be said for the characters. They were comedically larger than life in some places but that injected some humour into the book. I very much enjoyed Betteredge’s reliance on Robinson Crusoe. I got that the religious Miss Clack was a caricature intentionally, and that we were meant to hate her, but once that joke got old I found her chapters stopped me from wanting to pick the book back up.
Something I learnt from this book was about the existence of ‘visiting cards’ / ‘calling cards’ - a card that you leave at someone’s house if you call for them and they’re not in. I think this is where the criminal ‘calling card’ comes from
Content Warnings
Moderate: Murder and Racism