Read: July 2023
Rating: 7.5/10
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
Wilkie Collins’ classic detective novel The Moonstone (1868) was another one of my grad student book sale acquisitions. I had been meaning to read it for quite a while when I picked it up three months ago, so I’m glad I’ve finally gotten around to reading it now. One of the earliest examples of detective fiction, The Moonstone as a mystery is steeped in Victorian England’s social conflicts of class, gender, race, and religion. Narrated from multiple points of view, the mystery is a slow-paced, winding one, but nonetheless intriguing and captivating. It ends satisfyingly, but there were few dramatic twists and I was left wanting in that area. I give it a 7.5/10.
The Victorian tendency to provide exorbitant amounts of backstory and context has never been better exemplified than in this book, in my experience. The narrative opens with the story of the titular gemstone’s theft from its sacred place in India as spoils of war, “extracted from a family paper”. Then, we are jumped to 50 years later, when its possessor dies and it falls into the hands of Rachel Varinger, a beautiful young heiress, as a gift for her eighteenth birthday. By the next morning the priceless diamond has been stolen, and the investigation begins. This first part is narrated by Gabriel Betteredge, the household’s obsequious Robinson Crusoe-obsessed Steward.
I really liked this first half because of the narrative voice, it was so unique and there were many funny moments and snarky quips. Even though there was a lot of backstory infodumping going on, the old man’s rambling tendencies allowed the infodumping to be broken up by active scenes, keeping the narrative at a steady pace. After Betteredge passes the narrative over to Miss Clack, the novel began to drag a bit for me. Miss Clack’s narrative voice was annoying, and the other male characters’ narrative voices who took over after her were simply run-of-the-mill, nothing special to note. I do, however, really love the concept of this novel as an in-universe document, and the multiple narrative voices add a nice layer to that. The only other thing to note as a weak point in the novel is its reliance on letter-writing in the second half. It got very repetitive and boring, reading about characters writing and reading endless letters that described the action, instead of being immersed in the action itself.
Collins described the book as an “attempt made […] to trace the influence of character on circumstances,” and that can certainly be seen in the richness and complexity of the characters; the twistiness of the plot is directly shaped by their secrets, lies, hopes, fears, temperaments, and worldviews. It is very much like an Agatha Christie locked-room mystery in this respect, but without being confined to one location: the novel sprawls across England, touching on mainland Europe and, of course, India.
As I read through the novel, I found myself thinking the story could be ingeniously adapted into a 1940s noir tale because of the rigidity of the gender roles in both periods. The novel has a lot to say about Victorian gender roles and performance. It also comments heavily on class and Christianity, as mentioned above. It would be fascinating to do an in-depth reading on intersectionality in this text.
Overall, I quite enjoyed The Moonstone. It returned me to one of my favourite fictional worlds, the detective’s Victorian England. It has inspired me to get back to writing mystery, which is surely the mark of a good mystery novel. With a rating of 7.5/10, it’s staying on my bookshelf.
Work Cited
Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 1993.