Armadale
Ratings2
Average rating3
When the elderly Allan Armadale makes a terrible confession on his death-bed, he has little idea of the repercussions to come, for the secret he reveals involves the mysterious Lydia Gwilt: flame-haired temptress, bigamist, laudanum addict and husband-poisoner. Her malicious intrigues fuel the plot of this gripping melodrama: a tale of confused identities, inherited curses, romantic rivalries, espionage, money—and murder. The character of Lydia Gwilt horrified contemporary critics, with one reviewer describing her as "One of the most hardened female villains whose devices and desires have ever blackened fiction." She remains among the most enigmatic and fascinating women in nineteenth-century literature and the dark heart of this most sensational of Victorian "sensation novels." For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.
Tags
Reviews
Popular Reviews
Reviews with the most likes.
reviews.metaphorosis.com
Armadale
Wilkie Collins
3.5 stars
My knowledge of Wilkie Collins comes almost entirely from The Moonstone and The Woman in White. I enjoyed those when I was young, and re-read them several years back. With the advent of e-books and free books, I picked up a lot of Mr. Collins' work (and that of his friend Mr. Dickens). Armadale was my first venture into this unknown territory.
Armadale is a long, convoluted mystery about two men named Allan Armadale, their sons, also conveniently named Allan Armadale, and the woman who links them all together. The first two end badly, and a core query is whether the sons much necessarily end badly - fate, predestination, etc.
The book is long, but I enjoyed almost all of it. I contrast the 600 pages of Armadale with the 600 pages I had remaining in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet when I picked up Collins' book. Armadale is certainly less self-consciously ‘literary', but it's no shallower, and it's a lot more fun to read.
Collins starts with a fairly defensive foreword warning of experimentation, and leaving judgment to history. I read the book 150 years later, so I guess he wins. At the same time, I'm not quite sure what he was so defensive about. The story is told using all sorts of narrative devices - multiple points of view, letters, journal entries, you name it. Mostly, it works very well. The book also has a number of rants about one or another aspect of society. A number of them are funny, and none of them really get in the way of the story. In fact, the only narrative tic that bothered me was the number of references to “If only this were fiction!”
In terms of story, there's a good range of characters, most of them likeable (the lead Armadale himself is a bit whiny). The plot is not surprising, but Collins sustains the interest well despite the story's length. The question of predestination failed to interest me, but otherwise the story was fun.
All in all, a fun, light story well worth reading.
DNF after 80%. Other than The Moonstone, The Woman in White and No Name, I find this book rather tedious. And rather contrived. Could not be bothered to find out how it ends.
