Mysteries are so hard to review - I mean, what's the by what metric do you gauge them? Surprise? Overall dramatic tension? Writing Style? I'm not even sure myself, but I really liked Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone, it had a very different mode than the classical detective tale à la Agatha Christie et. al. In fact, it's not much of a detective tale at all. There's a detective, rather briefly, but he retires and gives the case up to pamper his rose garden.There's a tangible appreciation for art and craft in this novel, which I want to touch on briefly. Betteredge has a profound adoration of the novel Robinson Crusoe and uses it as an ersatz Bible: a literal apotheosis of Literature. This is, afterall, a very literary mystery novel, one which has post-modern tricks and unreliable narrators and artifact-as-narrative component, etc. Betteredge's reverance for Defoe operates to subordinate the role of religion but not to destroy it - religious destruction brings one's own demise, as in the case of the stolen gemstone from the Hindu temple. Another instance is Sergeant Cuff, and his curious affection for roses: an affection which I took as a sort of surrogate for the novelist's love of literature: I began my life among them in my father's nursery garden, and I shall end my life among them, if I can. Yes. One of these days (please God) I shall retire from catching thieves, and try my hand at growing roses.Like Cuff's relationships with roses, a novelist, or any artist, begins life among his art, begins life as an admirer of art, of books, of paintings, of music, and in his age that appreciation boils inside him or her as an artist impulse. Cuff is torn between the art of mystery and the art of beauty, and that is the same tension which pervades the novel overall. While the story is clearly a mystery, its form defies the tradition of genre fiction (in the sense that one considers "genre fiction" to be a simplistic narrative, mortgaging style to buttress plot). The story is broken down into a series of first-hand accounts, all unreliable, all contradicting each other, but ultimately leading to the thief by a thin strand of truth.I'm a sucker for unreliable narrators. They unlock the imagination, and make you question "is that what really happened?" and really we are all unreliable narrators. Who doesn't embellish their anecdotes for dramatic or humorous effect? It is likely universally done, but we hardly hold it against anyone. Unreliable narrators in fiction are so interesting because we get to be the detectives ourselves. While The Moonstone is a crime story, a detective story, the real mystery is the particular motives of our many narrators: why do they tell us what they do? what do they conceal, and why? What is their motive, what do they hope to gain (or not lose)? In my youth I was very much attracted to mystery novels, and couldn't remember half the titles or authors if I wracked my brain for weeks. My mother is a voracious reader of the mass-market mystery paperback: Cromwell, Patterson, Higgins Clark, etc. We have about seven packed bookshelves of these mysteries, which she reads and re-reads (the benefits of aging and fading memory, I suppose: re-reading mysteries!) - we also have a few bookshelves of my dad's German chemistry books, some business theory books, a handfull of classic paperbacks (1944 edition of Wuthering Heights, two copies of The Odyssey (Fitzgerald, Fagles), a collection of D.H. Lawrence's Short Stories, two copies of Moby-Dick (why?), etc.), and my abandoned bookshelf in my abandoned childhood room with paperbacks of Ayn Rand, some school books on writing and on finance, and some beloved comic books. Reading is a passion, and those with the passion must have some love for mystery, I think.What makes us read on? I suspect it is some mystery, though I would not say it is suspense, which is a sort of specialized mystery. Sure, the mysteries in Christie or in my mother's beloved collection are very much in the foreground, they are murders or thefts, kidnappings or conspiracies: mysteries in the very classical sense. But I believe every book worth reading is a mystery at heart, if the reader is a curious and engaged participant in literature. From "Who is John Galt?" to "Who is Leopold Bloom?" - we are constantly confronted with the mystery of character, of motivation, of desire. And deeper than that, there are larger questions confronted by literature, questions which diminish characters to puppets on the stage: Death - life - love - hate, what do these concepts mean to us? what do we believe about them? You cannot touch love, you cannot look at it under a microscope, and to examine it in our own lives is to make us the unreliable yarn-spinners of our own narratives. Books, literature, are the best microscopes we have for life's manifold mysteries. Like in The Moonstone, every book is the unreliable narration of life's eternal enigmas, full of smokescreens and lies, mistakes in memory, but ultimately the compounding of perspectives begins to reveal to the reader something with a shimmer of truth beneath the earth of evasion.
While storms have raged, while at high tide waves have hit the sea wall with such force that the house shook, I have been spending the dark evenings re-reading ‘The Moonstone’, secure in the knowledge that out house was built not long after the publication of Wilkie Collins’ wonderful book and so it has survived many storms and was so solidly built that it should survive many more.I think that ‘The Moonstone’ is pitched at the perfect point between crime fiction and sensation fiction, and it makes me wish that I could have been a Victorian reader, so that I could have read it when it was new, original and innovative, and so that I could read it with my mind uncluttered by more than a century of books that have come since then, and a few that I can think of that clearly have been influenced by this wonderful tale.I am sure that Conan-Doyle read this book; I suspect that Victoria Holt had it in mind when she named her novel ‘The Shivering Sands’; and I am quite certain that Hercule Poirot’s retirement to the country to grow vegetable marrows was a tribute to Seargeant Cuff and his wish to see out his days growing roses ….. but I’m getting ahead of myself.I’m not sure that ‘The Moonstone’ has stood the test of time as well as some of Wilkie Collins’ other work, but it is still a fine entertainment, and among the most readable of classics.The moonstone – a fabulous Hindu diamond – is seized – some would say stolen – during the storming of Seringapatam. The taker of the diamond believes it to be cursed, and takes serious steps to ensure his own safety and the safety of his jewel. In his will he leaves it to his niece, the daughter of his estranged sister. And so the moonstone is given to Rachel Verinder on her 18th birthday. That night the moonstone disappears. The case is investigated by Seargeant Cuff, of the new detective force, and an extraordinary sequence of events will unfold before the truth of what happened that night, and the fate of the jewel, is made clear.The tale is told by a series of narrators, because this is an account of the moonstone compiled some time after the events it describes by an interested party. He brought together family papers and accounts of events that he asked those who were best placed to report, to create a continuous narrative.That device works wonderfully well, controlling what the reader knew without the reader having to feel manipulated, and adding depth to the characters by viewing them through different eyes. Fortunately the narrators are nicely differentiated. I loved Gabriel Betteredge, the indispensable steward to the Verinder family, a man of firm opinions who was nonetheless a model servant, who believed that all of the answers to life’s problems lay in the pages Robinson Crusoe. But I heartily disliked Miss Clack, a pious, sanctimonious cousin, blind to the feelings and concerns of others, but insistent that they must read her tracts. And I was fascinated by Ezra Jennings, a doctor who had been dragged down by his addiction to opium, but who was grateful for the chances he had been given and ready to play his part in uncovering the truth. And there were others; every voice, every character, was utterly believable.Even more interesting than the narrators though were two women, at opposite ends of the social spectrum, who both chose not to speak out. Rosanna Spearman was a servant, and though I had reasons to doubt her, I could see that she was troubled and I feared for her. I nearly dismissed Rachel Verinder, as a spoilt madam, but in time I came to see that I had misjudged and underestimated with her.The atmosphere was everything I could have hoped for, and the settings were wonderfully created. I especially loved the scenes set out on the treacherous ‘Shivering Sands’. And the story twisted and turned, and sprang surprises, very effectively. I remembered that broad sweep of the story from the first time I read ‘The Moonstone’, many years ago, but I had forgotten just how events played out, but even when I remembered it didn’t matter. Wilkie Collins was such a wonderful, clever storyteller that I was captivated, from the first page to an afterword that was absolutely perfect.I loved almost everything, but I do have to say that the story is a little uneven, and that no character is as memorable as Marion Halcombe and Count Fosco in ‘The Women and White.’ But then, few characters are.This is a very different pleasure. maybe a more subtle pleasure. And definitely a rattling good yarn!
What do You think about The Moonstone (2001)?
Literary 2012 is closing on an auspicious high, no doubt about it. These are the facts.First, there was waterworks over Turgenev’s Fathers and Children a couple of weeks ago. Second, upon finding out that my favourite film Marienbad was based on The Invention of Morel, which now ordered will see me through to the New Year, there was flushed excitement.Third, I have not stopped laughing since I took up The Moonstone. A veritable boon of emotions. Some have pointed out it might be less the influence of books and more the signs of the menopause, but to them I come armed with Miss Clack’s irrefutable tracts of the early edition-only the twenty fifth-of the famous anonymous work by the precious miss Bellows entitled ‘The Serpent at Home’, where right past the chapter ‘Satan in the Hairbrush’ and ‘Satan under the Teatable’ there is Satan on the Tongue. (amongst the many others. I’m sure).Now there will be those who say this is a poor sort of protracted mystery indeed with oodles of trivia and asides not pertinent to the matter at hand. To them, I would say something. But first, like Betteredge, in plain English I’m going stare hard and say nothing. Then I will instantly exert my wits but being of a slovenly English sort, they are consequently muddled until someone takes them in hand points out what they ought to do. In this case, things stand just like the relationship with Betteredge and his deceased wife, who seemed, with the best of motives, to be getting in one anothers way: if he wanted to go upstairs, she would be coming down, or when he wanted to go down, there she was coming up. And so it is here: its not about the mystery, but the parade of misbegotten, ridiculous characters bumbling about in their cloaks of self importance and delusions of grandeur, as Collins tears into them with unabashed irony. No need to have read Robinson Crusoe to get the gist.
—knig
It took me about seven months to finish this book. I listened to it at night on Kindle via text-to-speech. "The Moonstone" is a mystery involving the theft of an enormous Indian diamond called The Moonstone which is fated to be cursed. The mystery is who stole it the night of Miss Rachel Verinder's birthday. She had shortly received the diamond as a bequest from a deceased uncle, carried by the dashing young Mr. Franklin Blake on his travel to England. According to Wikipedia, this is the first English detective novel. It's also an interesting use of the Epistolary format, including varied narratives, most interestingly that of the Gabriel Betteridge, the trusted house steward of Lady Verinder, Rachel's mother. I don't know if Collins intended for Betteridge's point of view to be so hilarious but it was. Most hilarious is his obsession with the novel Robinson Crusoe. He takes the same amount of inspiration and guidance from this book that people might take from The Bible. He's also really opinionated and not afraid to express his opinion. Miss Clack's narrative is more ironicly humorous. She is a very puritanical woman who is constantly trying to foist off her Christian pamphlets on others, but demonstrates few Christian virtues in other ways. Interestingly enough, the true detective, Sergeant Cuff, seems to have the smallest narrative. I can't help but think this was done on purpose. If he was around to solve the mystery for most of the book, I think it would have ended a lot sooner. I liked his appreciation for roses, not quite what you would expect from a gruff police investigator. What is sad is the narrative of Rosanna Spearman, a misunderstood and unfortunate young woman who was unlucky enough to fall in love with a man who was completely unattainable in every way, despite her efforts to protect him from what she viewed as his own crime. This part made me feel deeply for Rosanna, merely a victim of chance and circumstance.Franklin Blake is a character that one is automatically predisposed to believe the worst about. He's the definition of 'amiable rogue' and 'dilettante.'. However, he is revealed to have a depth of character that one wouldn't expect at first glance.Miss Rachel Verinder herself has no narrative, but she is seen through the eyes of other characters. I felt that she was probably the least interesting of the major characters. She reads as quite typical of a young woman of her class, but she is clearly a decent and kind woman.There is a bit of a romance in the story that I found sweet and appealing, not distracting. It ties into the story and it reveals much about two of the characters.To be honest, I probably could have gleaned a lot more from this book if my reading had not been so episodic. However, I do appreciate Collins' skill with writing a clever detective story, and his use of so many narratives, having done so cohesively. While each narrator has a different voice, it all comes together very pleasingly. He seemed to take a lot of time develop the characters, even the less important ones. Social issues I felt that this novel touches on (My opinion, mind you, since I made an effort not to read up on The Moonstone before writing my review.): *Social Strata--Boundaries between the social classes and where they intersect intimately in some ways, but most doors are largely closed between the classes. You do see that the middle class seems to be absorbing the upper class as society changes. *The roles of women in society*The change in society in which the landed gentry's way of life is dying in favor or the middle class development.*Imperialism and appropriation of treasured objects from colonized landsReaders who want a more thorough and expert analysis of this book can look to these resources:The Moonstone Wikipedia pageSparkNotes The Moonstone page
— Danielle The Book Huntress (Self-Proclaimed Book Ninja)
The Moonstone is the second mystery by Wilkie Collins i read. After "The Woman in White" I was afraid i would be dissapointed by this one! But it was a great book and i really enjoyed reading it!The story is pretty simple, an indian Diamond called the Moonstone find its way to an english heiress on her birthday and then simply dissapears the day after the birthday party.What i loved most in this book, which is i guess the style of Wilkie Collins, is how the story was told. Every character transcripts the events as he witnessed them only, nothing more! and so, as we keep on reading we piece together the different pieces of the puzzle, as the characters discover new leads and witness new events! and that kept me alert and made it difficult for me to put the book down.The characters were original and most of them were funny, i liked the old servant the best, Gabriel Betteredge and his fanatical love to Robinson Crusoe! He really made laugh many times, and the Sergeant Cuff was one of a kind!!!The way the mystery unfolds was a little bit of a surprise to me. and after all the suspence i think the end was somehow an easy one, but i liked it anyway!It was a big book but it was worth all the time i spent on it, and i surely will read more of Wilkie Collins soon :)
—Faouzia
