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okenwillow's review
5.0
Les mots me manquent, les bras m’en tombent. L’un dans l’autre ce billet promet de ne pas briller par son contenu, mais que faire, que dire après un tel monument qui m’a procuré une extase sans nom ? Wilkie Collins nous balance un bon gros pavé bourré de personnages magnifiques et hauts en couleurs, des intrigues tortueuses, des rebondissements, des secrets inavouables, des âmes tourmentées, une société victorienne avec ses défauts mais avec cette ambiance qui me ravit.
Le meilleur de maître Wilkie est développé à son maximum dans Armadale.
Un antagonisme prédestiné, une dualité troublante dans laquelle l’innocence et l’ignorance de l’un contrebalance la connaissance et la paranoïa de l’autre.
Les deux Armadale forme un duo improbable, deux personnalités que tout sépare, riches et complexes. On pourrait parler des heures de ce roman sublime, malheureusement le temps me manque et à moins de faire une dissertation de 3612 pages qui de toute façons ne suffirait pas à faire le tour de la question, la chose me parait vaine. Notons cependant un personnage que j’ai adoré (parmi d’autres !), une méchante vilaine pas sympa du tout mais finalement très attachante, spécimen anachronique de femme fatale.
Pour finir et avant de m’enfoncer d’avantage, voici un extrait qui suffira à illustrer l’humour et la finesse de Wilkie :
Le meilleur de maître Wilkie est développé à son maximum dans Armadale.
Un antagonisme prédestiné, une dualité troublante dans laquelle l’innocence et l’ignorance de l’un contrebalance la connaissance et la paranoïa de l’autre.
Les deux Armadale forme un duo improbable, deux personnalités que tout sépare, riches et complexes. On pourrait parler des heures de ce roman sublime, malheureusement le temps me manque et à moins de faire une dissertation de 3612 pages qui de toute façons ne suffirait pas à faire le tour de la question, la chose me parait vaine. Notons cependant un personnage que j’ai adoré (parmi d’autres !), une méchante vilaine pas sympa du tout mais finalement très attachante, spécimen anachronique de femme fatale.
Pour finir et avant de m’enfoncer d’avantage, voici un extrait qui suffira à illustrer l’humour et la finesse de Wilkie :
« Quand vous dites non à une femme, monsieur, dites-le toujours en un seul mot. Si vous lui donnez des raisons, elle croit invariablement que vous voulez lui dire oui. »
melanie10082006's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
lauralovebook's review against another edition
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
4.0
evatj's review
5.0
Armadale is probably one of the best stories I have ever read; well paced, with enough twists and turns to keep a reader engaged. Also, if someone is considering this specific mint edition, I do highly recommend.
ohnoflora's review
4.0
I will never get tired of Wilkie Collins' subversion of the matrimonial climax. For him marriage is not the be all and end all: in fact it is often written as being fraught with danger. It's the spaces between that interest him: the flux of friendship and love and the lines drawn between them. It's no coincidence that his novels often end with a ménage-a-trois - a triangle of people who balance each other out - or a strengthening of the same-sex relationship that has held the novel together.
In this case the novel ends with Allan Armadale on the point of marrying the rather insipid Neelie Milroy (who he has fallen in and out of love with on a regular basis throughout the novel) while at the same time affirming his lifelong devotion to Ozias Midwinter:
"I know that if you take to Literature, it shan't part us, and that if you go on a sea voyage, you will remember when you come back that my house is your home".
In this case the novel ends with Allan Armadale on the point of marrying the rather insipid Neelie Milroy (who he has fallen in and out of love with on a regular basis throughout the novel) while at the same time affirming his lifelong devotion to Ozias Midwinter:
"I know that if you take to Literature, it shan't part us, and that if you go on a sea voyage, you will remember when you come back that my house is your home".
jucebar's review against another edition
5.0
Es un 4.5
Tiene muy buenos personajes, me entretuvo desde el inicio, pero senti al final que algo no me convencio, pero es una magnifica obra de wilkie collins, me encanta como todo encaja, y ciertos sucesos se explican mas adelante.
Ya es uno de mis escritores favoritos de clasicos.
Tiene muy buenos personajes, me entretuvo desde el inicio, pero senti al final que algo no me convencio, pero es una magnifica obra de wilkie collins, me encanta como todo encaja, y ciertos sucesos se explican mas adelante.
Ya es uno de mis escritores favoritos de clasicos.
bagpuss's review
3.0
Hmmm, I prefer rating things out of ten as it gives more room for manoeuvre. It didn't deserve four stars but three is too low. One word springs to mind - contrived. I was expecting that as all these melodramas hinge on coincidence but somehow it all seemed a little bit too much. That said, I did enjoy it a lot of the time and never wanted to stop reading. Unfortunately my opinion of Wilkie Collins is now not as high as it was
phileasfogg's review
5.0
Never let the two Allan Armadales meet in this world: never, never, never!
They meet.
An enjoyable Victorian psychological thriller. The initial set-up, with its multiple Allan Armadales, was suspiciously like the start of Martin Chuzzlewit, the last Victorian novel I attempted. (I may finish it someday, if ever I imagine myself to be immortal, and/or most other books disappear.)
But within a few pages it was clear that this was no Martin Chuzzlewit. I could almost imagine Wilkie Collins had read, or tried to read, his friend's novel, shaken his head, and thought, 'I'll show him what a novel looks like.'
There is more exciting incident in the prologue of Armadale than there could be in ten Martin Chuzzlewits. Disinheritance, murder, a sea chase, seduction, shipwreck, elopement, pursuit, poisoning, fraud, impersonation, false identities. Not necessarily in that order.
This book should be a TV series. The prologue could be the first season.
Where Collins differs most from Dickens is that he is more interested in telling an exciting and entertaining story, even if it is a little improbable. The characters have weird experiences where dreams appear to bleed into reality. They are afflicted by coincidences that a later writer would have felt obliged to invent an improbability drive to justify. A character's paranoid delusions turn out to represent the merest shadow of the real conspiracy.
Do the coincidences require a supernatural explanation? I don't think so. It is a sad and curious fact that literary theorists have a prejudice against coincidence, and generally treat it as a weakness in novels. Even though they, like everyone else, must have experienced remarkable coincidences in their own lives, in cities vastly more populous than the cities these coincidence-filled Victorian novels were set in. It is from these everyday unlikely-seeming events that stories emerge. London, at the time Armadale is set, had not many more people in it than my own provincial city has now, where seemingly coincidental connections between people are so commonplace that there is a standard comical response: 'Adelaide's a small town'.
It's a complicated novel, and I seriously considered drawing a plot diagram when I temporarily lost track of which Allan Armadale was which Allan Armadale's son. (I doodled a page of blobs and lines once, and realised I'd only covered the prologue.) Fortunately, most of the time there's only one person actually calling himself Allan Armadale, and the other Allan Armadale goes by a pseudonym. On one occasion I felt that the complication might have got the better of the author. At the risk of spoiling something,
Spoiler
it seemed inconceivable that the paranoid Midwinter could learn the name of his neighbour's governess without being horrified--when the tiniest coincidence would set off his paranoia, it seems absurd that he could rationalise that there must be, ooh, a dozen Lydia Gwilts in England. Perhaps the fact that he secretly has the same name as his best friend makes this coincidence seem less suggestiveSpoiler
it might have been fun if the wrong Allan Armadale had answered the newspaper advertisement and received the confessional letter, and gone through the novel believing that his father had done what the other Allan Armadale's father had done, and that each Allan Armadale was the other.The man who calls himself Allan Armadale, and his girlfriend, are likeable but not the most fascinating characters, and the novel might be improved if their romance was compressed. But the two other main characters are compelling, unique and fully believable creations. Most especially the villainess, Lydia Gwilt, must be one of the great characters of fiction, and the diary that reveals her inner life is as great a feat of imagination and writing skill as I've seen in 19th century fiction.
The 'detection' aspect of the novel was especially interesting. One 'detective' is a young small-town lawyer who expertly navigates the informational world of London. From his exploits you have to suppose that lawyers in the mid-19th-century performed a role similar to private detectives in our time. Then there are the agents of the Private Inquiry Office in Shadyside Place, who are as shady as their address suggests, and are surely based on a real organisation of the time.
metaphorosis's review
3.0
reviews.metaphorosis.com
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.
Armadale
Wilkie Collins
3.5 stars
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.
wanderlustsleeping's review
3.0
Just fine. I'm a bit disappointed, but only because I expected more than what I got. Overall still enjoyable!