Customer Reviews

The Moonstone (Barnes & Noble Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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2 star:		(1)
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The Moonstone is a classic, and although is a great mystery, the writing is most creative. The story is told as though one of the characters decided to write about the events over the past year. To help him, he asks other characters to take up a chapter from their own point of view. Therefore the story is "written" by several authors - all characters in the story. Because of the various writers, the style of writing changes to reflect the characters' personalities. This is a very creative method of defining each character and gives a better perspective of the events of the mystery.

This is a classic novel which T.S. Elliot called the greatest detective novel ever written. I can't go that far but it is in the running. Wilkie Collins is a writer who has been forgotten by the mainstream who is in dear need of a revival. This book and Woman in White are great examples of Victorian Literature. The characters are great and the mystery is intense with exquisite prose. If you love the detective stories of Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie then pick this one up.

I understood that The Moonstone is a classic so I decided to read this to be culturally literate. Well the story line may be interesting but the writing is atrocious. It is curricular, bloated, and seemingly pointless. The characters just keep rattling. A lot of writers fill in the story with descriptions of time and place to give an atmosphere to the story. This writer (Wilkie Collins) just fills it with unrelated trivia. Every once in a while I would go back a few pages to see what I must have missed. When I read again there was nothing there to miss. Ether Wilkie is extremely monotonous or other writing from this period is and I am just now lucky enough to find out. I talked to others about this and they said; "Now you know why Sherlock Holmes is so popular"