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A review by sammy_
Armadale by Wilkie Collins, John Sutherland
5.0
This is the third of Wilkie Collins’ mid-Victorian ‘sensation novels’ which I’ve read, after The Woman In White and The Moonstone.
This is in the same vein, essentially a domestic thriller in which the audience are privy to the identities, secrets, intentions, and inner thoughts of all the characters, but the characters themselves are in the dark - often expediently only discovering key information after they’ve just made a rash decision or fatal misstep that that information could have prevented.
More than any other of his books on similar themes, it also reflects that peculiar Victorian anxiety around identity - shared names; mix-ups and misunderstandings; stolen identities; forged references; and false respectability: Wilkie appears to have considered the main objective of his novels to be to leave every Victorian reader terrified about who might actually be living under their roof, and wondering if they truly knew anybody at all.
One thing I will say is that Wilkie has never been known for his economy with words, and the novel’s content would certainly not justify its 200,000+ word count by modern standards. But then, reading a Victorian novel is a bit like listening to an elderly relative relate an anecdote: there’s a curious enjoyability in the circuitousness of the tale and the manner of telling it, and perhaps also a heightened tension as a result, which ultimately makes the denouement all the more satisfying.
This is in the same vein, essentially a domestic thriller in which the audience are privy to the identities, secrets, intentions, and inner thoughts of all the characters, but the characters themselves are in the dark - often expediently only discovering key information after they’ve just made a rash decision or fatal misstep that that information could have prevented.
More than any other of his books on similar themes, it also reflects that peculiar Victorian anxiety around identity - shared names; mix-ups and misunderstandings; stolen identities; forged references; and false respectability: Wilkie appears to have considered the main objective of his novels to be to leave every Victorian reader terrified about who might actually be living under their roof, and wondering if they truly knew anybody at all.
One thing I will say is that Wilkie has never been known for his economy with words, and the novel’s content would certainly not justify its 200,000+ word count by modern standards. But then, reading a Victorian novel is a bit like listening to an elderly relative relate an anecdote: there’s a curious enjoyability in the circuitousness of the tale and the manner of telling it, and perhaps also a heightened tension as a result, which ultimately makes the denouement all the more satisfying.