The Moonstone

I was inspired to select The Moonstone (Oxford World's Classics) from the tottering TBR pile so that I could get a more out of the Wilkie Collins tour sponsered by the Classics Circuit. It was a great choice--I'm glad I finally got around to reading it and can put a tick mark next to it on the list of classics read--but it wasn't necessarily a great book. A good book, yes, by all means, but not great.

More than anything else, The Moonstone is a mystery story. Told from the point-of-view of several characters, some quite minor to the plot actually, the narrative is a series of recollections that sometimes sound as if they were legal statements for a trial. While I can appreciate the air of authenticity this gives to the fiction, it does tend to get a bit tedious, especially if the characters are long-winded. I did think that Collins did a superb job in staying in character, with each of the narrators having their own distinct voice.

Also, considering that the novel first was published serially, Collins did an incredible job in keeping his details straight as he unfolded the mystery. It's hard enough to keep a story bounded from beginning to end anyway, but to do so without being able to revise the beginning to suit how the end evolves is simply staggering.

There are a fair number of interesting characters--Cuff and Bruff, the detective and the lawyer, the trio of cousins (Rachel, Godfrey, and Franklin), the Robinson Crusoe-reading steward Betteridge and his lady's maid daughter, and my favorite, Ezra Jennings, an opium addict who solves the mystery, at least 90% of it. I see a lot of Dickensian characterization particularly in the latter part of the book--for example, Octavius Guy (aka 'Gooseberry'), the little boy who works for Mr. Bruff, is afflicted with eyes that "projected so far, and they rolled about so loosely, that you wondered uneasily why they remained in their sockets."

Although in my last post on The Moonstone, I did include a couple of passages, I found the book remarkably thin when it came to passages that stirred my soul, challenged my intellect, or left me breathless with admiration. In other words, Collins told a good, interesting story but I didn't come away from reading it thinking that it had changed me in any way.

A good book, but not a great one. Now I need to get the movie on order!

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme

It's November. We're well past our first snow along the Front Range in Colorado, in fact last week it snowed for 50 straight hours in Denver and we had about 10 inches of wet, heavy snow at our house. Good thing we had already harvested the last of the onions, garlic, and carrots. The vegetable garden is ready for winter, but the flower garden still needs some attention before we call it done for the season (i.e., dead foliage cleared and perennials banked with leaves).

Inside, my kitchen garden has happily readjusted to indoor temperatures and humidity (i.e., zero) and the parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, mint, and oregano are past sulking and look positively perky and ready to be added to winter soups and stews and sauces and chilis.

Meanwhile on the reading front, I'm on the homestretch with The Moonstone. Miss Clack remains my favorite in the weird sister category--for some reason when I was reading about her I flashed on The Importance of Being Earnest several times, remembering when Lady Bracknell says, "Is this Miss Prism a female of repellent aspect, remotely connected with education?" I matched Miss Prism and Miss Clack as kindred spirits, and can't now think of one without the other.

I also just started Julie & Julia, which I picked up for a whole $1 at our last JASNA book exchange. It's fun, easy, and not at all Victorian, which is a nice change of pace...don't want to turn into Miss Clack, after all.

NetFlix should be delivering the second disc of the first season of The House of Elliot. If you haven't watched this fantabulous BBC series, created by Jean Marsh of Upstairs, Downstairs fame, then you should rush out and find it. It's about two 1920's sisters who find themselves orphaned, impoverished (sort of) and awfully good at dress-making, flirting, dancing, flying kites, ranting, and living. My mother told me about it--and she was right...I love it!






Finally, tomorrow is my birthday. Yes, I am a Guy Fawkes baby (as in, "Remember, remember the fifth of November, gunpowder, treason and plot"). I just checked Netflix--they still don't have Gunpowder, Treason, and Plot.

I also need to settle on an adaptation of The Moonstone to watch once I'm done with the book. There's one from 1996 here, and a 1972 version here. The 1996 version has Greg Wise as Franklin Blake, so that may just settle it!

Wilkie Collins, Serialization, and The Moonstone

Today is the kickoff of the Wilkie Collins tour, sponsered by The Classics Circuit.

Today's tour stop provides an overview of Collins and a brief look at serialized novels. Visit the Sophisticated Dorkiness blog for stop 1 on the tour.

In anticipation of this tour, I started Collins's 1868 novel The Moonstone last week. I'm about half done--finished the long first part in which Gabriel Betteridge, faithful servant to Lady Verinder, recounts his version of events. It was interesting at first but got to dragging, and I found myself getting irritated with Betteridge's constantly self-effacing and long-winded narration.

The second part, that of Miss Clack's acerbic and self-righteous testimonial, has renewed my interest in the story. I admire how Collins made the two narrators I've encountered so far sound so differently from each other, and she's such a refreshing change from Betteridge.

I've heard that the narrator of The Moonstone is one of those unreliable types, so I'm constantly second-guessing what they're saying. Since there are multiple narrators, I can only assume that it is the master himself, Franklin Blake, the character who collects the various accounts of the story together and has the last word, that is the unreliable one, but I'm still not trusting anyone and I'm not going to cheat and find out before I finish the novel.

Best bits--I'm not that far into the Miss Clack part, but the meeting of the Committee of the Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society was an absolute joy. In the words of Miss Clack:

We had a meeting that evening of the Select Committee of the Mothers'-Small-Clothes-Conversion-Society. The object of this excellent Charity is - as all serious people know - to rescue unredeemed fathers' trousers from the pawnbroker, and to prevent their resumption, on the part of the irreclaimable parent, by abridging them immediately to suit the proportions of the innocent son.

Here's another gem from Miss C, this time channelling Mary Bennet:

Oh, my young friends and fellow-sinners! beware of presuming to exercise your poor carnal reason. Oh, be morally tidy. Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith. Both ever spotless, and both ready to put on at a moment's notice!

I think I may have just found my new motto: Let your faith be as your stockings, and your stockings as your faith.