I downloaded this quite some time ago. It is one of many free books on the Kindle list. Probably also on Gutenberg. It looks like I downloaded everything available by Wilkie Collins. The only things I had actually read - and I read them many years ago were The Moonstone and The Woman in White. I think my thought was that if he had written two that I had enjoyed as much as those, maybe it was worth looking at some of his less known works.
This actually is quite short, only 1600 "locations" compared to 7200 for The Moonstone and around 5000 for the light-weight mysteries I have been reading. I'm not sure what a "location" implies. A line, perhaps, at some unspecified width which is wider that my setting because I like a narrower format - reads more quickly. I suppose this is probably counted among his short stories. At any rate at just a bit more than a fifth the length of his "major" works, this one moved to the point quickly and kept the tension high for the entire story, which is fairly unusual for a contemporary (and friend) of Charles Dickens.
The plot was predictable but compelling - beautiful girl dumps one admirer for another and both set off on an expedition to the artic, the dumpee swearing vengeance against the fiance whose identity is unknown to him at that point. Expedition ends in disaster. And by the way, the girl has the Second Sight and sees her lover helpless at the mercy of the other. The ending is a classic Collins twist, and that is all I plan to say about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment