Roov's Full Review: Wilkie Collins and Lillian (AFT) Nayder - The Moon...
I've read a number of books in my day. One of them was this one. If that was all I had to say about it, this would be a tiresome article indeed, though mercifully brief--but no, there's more.
This is one of those books that one might not tend to just happen to read, in the normal course of things, being as it is an old and mannered piece, not quite a Classic in the popular fashion of, say, 'Treasure Island,' nor yet in the literary fashion of, say, 'Moby Dick'...no, this is an old book but not a super-famous one except among devotees of early English novels, and so it happens that it was in a college course devoted to English novels that I came to read it.
I don't hold that against it. On the contrary, one of the nice things about college was the way it caused me to read and appreciate some books I might otherwise never have come upon. This turned out to be one of the books that I enjoyed enough to hold on to in later years, and keep on my bookshelf to this day.
So enough about my personal love affair with the novel, you may say. A charming tale of how you met and how happy your relationship is even to this day will carry us only so far. What of the book itself--tell us of the book!
Very well.
The author of 'The Moonstone,' Wilkie Collins, was a contemporary of Dickens, which should give you some idea of the context of his writing. A certain layered English society underlies everything, with Queen Victoria at the top. Collins was quite popular in his day, and wrote a number of well-received novels, none of which (save this one) I have read, although I would if I happened to stumble on them.
'The Moonstone' is an early form of detective novel, with a nicely plotted detective story conceived before all the conventions of detective stories today had yet been set in stone. It offers sensational events, death-threats, family scandals, drugs, suicide, misunderstandings, suspicions, love requited and unrequited--in short, pretty much any delightful element of a novel that you could care to name. All this activity hinges, of course, upon the Moonstone of the title, which is a huge yellow diamond acquired under suspicious circumstances in India by a man generally perceived to be a scoundrel (we should use the word 'scoundrel' more often today).
The stone, which is rumored to be cursed, is sent as a present to the scoundrel's niece on her 18th birthday, but it mysteriously disappears not 24 hours later, throwing a peaceable country house into an uproar and necessitating the summoning of the police. Upon their failing to uncover anything, a famous Inspector is called from London. Inspector Cuff is rather elderly, with a melancholy air and an unprepossessing appearance. He likes to spend most of his time thinking about roses. Nevertheless, he is of course much cleverer than he looks, and he promptly uncovers some interesting facts.
This being a mystery story, I don't feel much would be served by giving away a lot of details about the plot, since this might spoil the fun. I will note, however, that one of the interesting things is that while the Inspector comes almost immediately to a well-reasoned conclusion, this happens with most of the book still to go, and furthermore almost everyone else in the book heartily disputes his conclusions. In the rest of the novel the Inspector hardly appears, while other people relate various interesting things they know or discover regarding the whole curious affair.
The book is written in several different first-person voices, with the idea that it is actually a collection of real documents about the affair. We see letters from people involved, as well as sections of varying length written by one or another of the people concerned.
The different voices are all nicely done, from a hearty and rather gruff but kind-hearted elderly servant, to a maiden lady who lives to do charitable deeds like spreading helpful pamphlets with subjects like "Satan in the Hair Brush" for the edification of others, to the dashing young hero who was charged with delivering the diamond to the beautiful young lady.
Each narrator has a nicely distinctive voice separating his or her part of the story from those sections told by the others, which makes the format of the novel interesting to read as well as an effective storytelling device. It is quite entertaining to see various characters through each others' eyes as the story progresses, and each person manages to give us some new information about what's going on while at the same time showing us what sort of person they are and what they think of things.
The story itself is not really terribly convoluted (we do not have different narrators contradicting one another on key points of fact regarding what happened, for example), nor is it really a mystery that the reader may expect to solve (because the solution, although perfectly workable and consistent and satisfactory, does not really arise from previously known facts the way it would in a proper, modern mystery novel). Although there is definitely a mystery, the pleasure comes more from following along as the characters solve it than in trying to figure it out yourself. At least, so I found--if anyone would like to try to figure out the conclusion as they read, they are certainly free to do so and may have more luck than I did.
There's some interesting material for those who like to study social classes and relationships, since the narrators include servants (including one former thief), a poor upper class relation of a noble family, a sternly practical lawyer, two country doctors and a member of the nobility.
A nice touch, in my view, is the unrequited love of a plain servant girl for the dashing gentleman (and I also like the way even the dashing gentleman is not so stunning a specimen of manhood as dashing heroes often are--as one narrator remarks of him "he had promised to be tall, and had not kept that promise"): although she is poor and ugly and unworthy of him by all the book's standards, her love is presented as real and intense, which I liked since it often seems that only attractive people may experience passionate love in fluffy novels.
By calling it a fluffy novel I mean no disrespect at all, I only want to differentiate it from the more purposefully deep and meaningful novels one can find. This one feels like entertainment rather than intellectual exercise, and gives no indication of a desire to educate the reader concerning any serious social causes or anything. Read it for fun and I think you'll read it for the right reason, however many interesting things it has to recommend it aside from sheer fun.
The writing, although old-fashioned, is easy to read and follow. Some of the characters have a more flowery or high-flown way of speaking than others, so various parts may be easier or more difficult to follow according to how used you are to reading old books, but I think none of it could really be classified as hard reading for anyone accustomed to novels. A lot of the writing is also really enjoyable if you like that sort of stately Victorian prose (I rather do), with lots of measured, stylish sentences and descriptions to roll around the tongue.
In short, this is an aged but quite good book, well worth reading if you like old-fashioned mystery and romance.
The Moonstone is a page-turner, writes Carolyn Heilbrun. It catches one up and unfolds its amazing story through the recountings of its several narrat...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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