Recommendations from our site
“Essentially, it’s about the involuntary institutionalisation of women, and the inconvenience of women in certain parts of society and how they have been hidden away. Out of that comes a kind of mystery, in which people are trying to figure out what has happened to other people, and they come up against a very well-funded bureaucracy that is the legal system, and also the social mores of England at the time.” Read more...
Nicholas Russell, Novelist
“It’s credited with being the beginning of the whole genre of suspense. That’s why I picked it. I’ve only read it twice, but it’s lingered in my consciousness: the images and the feel of it. He really is a master of the tricks. I read somewhere that there are 40 cliff-hangers in it—he sort of invented the cliff-hanger. And I like the Russian doll structure of all the different accounts. You gradually lift off each little doll’s body and find another plot strand and another secret. I love that. It’s very cleverly done.” Read more...
Lucy Atkins, Novelist
“Where do you start with the story of The Woman in White? What do you do with a novel that has so many strange characters? How do you even begin to define its plot?……The novel is told to us by a number of narrators—Walter Hartright, Marian Halcombe, Fosco—almost every three chapters they’re switching. The glory of it is you get this story as if it’s a court hearing, everybody is presenting their evidence from their own particular perspectives.” Read more...
The Best Books by Wilkie Collins
Jason Hall, Literary Scholar
” I just have more time for voices speaking from the past than I do contemporary fiction authors of whom, quite frankly, I have yet to discover one I like. This is perhaps why, for me, The Woman in White is the perfect book. I love the plot, I love the characters, I love the settings, I just absolutely adore it. If you haven’t read it yet, I envy you, that you still have that experience in life ahead of you.” Read more...
Sophie Roell, Journalist
