Book Review: The Woman in White

Book: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Despite being an older book, the drama and suspense has not been diminished over the years. The story is told through various narrators and weaves a intriguing and dark mystery. The mystery contains a desperate conspiracy to acquire money but that's not the only conspiracy to take place within this story. Greed and a strong desire to keep a secret from being found is also interwoven in this tale.

The story follows Laura Fairlie who after growing interest in her art teacher Walter Hartright had second thoughts about marrying Sir Percival Glyde.

To do her best to better the situation Laura's sister Miss Marian Halcombe had persuaded Mr. Hartright to take leave early from his job and to return home. But amongst this a mystery was brewing with a strange letter arrived for Miss Fairlie that suggested she not marry Sir Percival.

The letter led Miss Halcombe and Mr. Hartright to Anne Catherick (a woman that Mr. Hartright had met previously the day before he started working for the Fairlie family).

There are quite a lot of twists and turns throughout this story. This was truly a well written story. It takes the reader through every step of the deceit and heroic measures that have been taken. And even though this was a book that I was casually reading, every time I picked this up, I was complete engaged. I wanted to know how things were going to turn out.

As interesting as this story was, you can't deny how Italians were seen through the eye of the author which at times seems to be unfavorable. Although not blatant racism as with some older book by various authors but there seems to be a bit of overgeneralization involved in the characterization.

And there was also a little bit of sexist writing but surprisingly not as much as you would think in such an old book. For instance, the character of Miss Marian Halcombe was actually written as a smart and strong willed opinionated person. And that's rare to see especially in a Victorian novel.

This was truly a gem of a novel and it turned out to be far better than I thought it would be. There were times when the story moved a little slow or became long winded (which is very common with these older stories) but overall it was very good.