I was recently listening to this book podcast (The Book Club, highly recommend it btw), and they were raving about The Woman in White and Wilkie Collins – basically reigniting my appreciation for all things Gothic. Since I have read and loved both his famous books – The Moonstone and The Woman in White, I thought I’d move on to some of his lesser known works.
About the Book
The star attraction is the novella The Haunted Hotel, a clever combination of detective and ghost story set in Venice, a city of grim waterways, dark shadows, and death. The action takes place in an ancient palazzo converted into a modern hotel that houses a grisly secret. The supernatural horror, relentless pace, tight narrative, and a doomed countess characterize and distinguish this powerful tale.
The other stories present equally disturbing scenarios, which includes ghosts, corpses that move, family curses, and perhaps most unusual of all, the Devil’s spectacles, which bring a clarity of vision that can lead to madness.
~ Synopsis from goodreads
My Review
I did not like this collection of stories as much as I expected to. While Collins is extremely readable in general, I think some of the worst foibles of Gothic writing permeate this collection of short stories. Overwritten and melodramatic!
The book starts off strongly with the novella, The Haunted Hotel, but I couldn’t stand how the women were portrayed, and the mystery, suspense, and horror weren’t strong enough to overcome the characterization. It’s also way too long and dragged out for the story it wants to tell.
The shorter stories fare better. I think I liked the ones without any women. When he does write women characters, they are moronic, fainting, and coddled, and they annoy me considerably.
Thus, my favorite short stories were Blow Up with the Brig! – a suspenseful sea story involving a ghostly warning and a ship carrying a deadly secret, Nine O’Clock! – a mystery built around an ominous prediction and a race against time, and The Devil’s Spectacles – a satirical fantasy in which a magical pair of spectacles reveals people’s true natures – with unsettling consequences.
But overall, this collection was disappointing. The stories just lacked the supernatural gut I was hoping for. They were quite well-written, but they weren’t very scary or particularly notable. I guess I would simply call them average.
