The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

Synopsis:
The theft of a rare diamond from India throws an upper class family and their servants into disarray and suspicion.

Review:
Published in 1868 and taking place from 1847-48, The Moonstone is one of my selections for the Winter Classics Challenge and the Chunkster Challenge. I knew that it was the first novel to introduce the classic British detective character, but I was not prepared for how funny and satirical the book would be. Collins structures the book around a series of first-person narratives from various characters, and each one has a separate, distinct voice that shows them in all their idiosyncratic glory. They are so true to themselves that they are not aware that we could be laughing at their foolishness, particularly the odiously pious Miss Clack. Continue reading

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2007 Chunkster Challenge

Since I’m already doing the classics challenge, I might as well do this one. I’ll be reading Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone. The Superfast Reader is not intimidated by long books, but she is intimidated by long books with dense prose in genres that are not her favorite.

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2007 Winter Classics Challenge

How could the Superfast Reader not be excited about this? Reading bloggers have been invited to read 5 classics in the months of January and February, courtesy of A Reader’s Journey.

My five, culled from my BookMooch stack:

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
The Railway Children by E. Nesbit
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Room with a View by EM Forster

HT: The Sheila Variations

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