The woman in white - BookDragons

No cover — Wilkie Collins: The woman in white (1952, Collins)

573 pages

English language

Published Jan. 6, 1952 by Collins.

No rating (1 review)

The Woman in White famously opens with Walter Hartright's eerie encounter on a moonlit London road. Engaged as a drawing master to the beautiful Laura Fairlie, Walter is drawn into the sinister intrigues of Sir Percival Glyde and his 'charming' friend Count Fosco, who has a taste for white mice, vanilla bonbons and poison. Pursuing questions of identity and insanity along the paths and corridors of English country houses and the madhouse, The Woman in White is the first and most influential of the Victorian genre that combined Gothic horror with psychological realism.

49 editions

LizAndra@books.theunseen.city reviewed The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Period suspense delivers

No rating

I have read The Woman in White once, listened to it read on the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast, and now I've listened to the audiobook version. I can say that this audiobook is my favorite experience of this book, largely due to the narrator, Ian Holm.

The story is set in 1850 in England. An heiress, who is orphaned and dependent on a self-absorbed uncle who just wants her to go away. Her half-sister is the other resident of the house, into which comes an art teacher. The art teacher and the heiress fall in love, and so of course he must leave because she is betrothed to a baronet. He seems quite attentive and kind at first. All is not what it seems, however. She receives a mysterious letter warning her about her fiancé, but she is too honorable to back out of the arrangement. What happens next …

I have read The Woman in White once, listened to it read on the Phoebe Reads a Mystery podcast, and now I've listened to the audiobook version. I can say that this audiobook is my favorite experience of this book, largely due to the narrator, Ian Holm.

The story is set in 1850 in England. An heiress, who is orphaned and dependent on a self-absorbed uncle who just wants her to go away. Her half-sister is the other resident of the house, into which comes an art teacher. The art teacher and the heiress fall in love, and so of course he must leave because she is betrothed to a baronet. He seems quite attentive and kind at first. All is not what it seems, however. She receives a mysterious letter warning her about her fiancé, but she is too honorable to back out of the arrangement. What happens next is a suspenseful story of 2 women trying to save themselves in a time and place where they have no agency.

Ian Holm is a delightful narrator for this story. In particular, his portrayal of the awful uncle is genius. The book is long (670+ pages; audio 24+ hours), but worth the time if you enjoy period suspense.