The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

Why did no one ever tell me about this book? Why did no one ever tell me about Wilkie Collins? A contemporary of Dickens, Collins was very popular in his lifetime, but somehow, in all my many years of school and college, I never heard his name or his books mentioned. Makes me wonder what other authors I may have missed.

This novel is described as the first of the English "sensation novels", what we would call in the U.S. a thriller. If Collins invented this format he was a genius. This novel has the elements we identify with a thriller. Its only weak points are its treatment of women as a somewhat helpless and inferior species, but I could easily say the same thing of Dickens. Even though one of the female characters (Marian) is instrumental in thwarting the plot Count Fosco (what a name for a villain) it is left to the male character to actually resolve things.

But it's a great read, actually a lot more approachable than some of the Dicken's novels. I wish that, as a high school junior, I had been given this to read instead of "A Tale of Two Cities".

Link to Amazon: The Woman in White (Modern Library Classics)