Discover Miss Or Mrs?/ The Haunted Hotel/ The Guilty River Outlined By Wilkie Collins Displayed As Paper Edition

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Gutenberg. org I love Wilkie Collins! Although not as good as "The Woman in White" or "The Moonstone," these short stories are great psychological thrillers/mysteries, Creepy, suspenseful, and each one so different from the last, Collins' writing style does take some adjusting to, but his books are fabulous reads for the mysterylover, A grouping of three novellas by Wilkie Collins first published betweenand, so I expected some differences in style as a result, To me, the strongest story was the first and the weakest was the last, Miss or Mrswas short enough to force an impressive pace to the plot, The Haunted Hotelseemed long enough to qualify as a novel rather than a novella, but still kept up a wellpaced plot, although I was not fully convinced about the motivation of some of the main characters.
It was, at times, spectacularly macabre, The Guilty Riverrather plodding by comparison, but still an enjoyable read, Altogether classic Wilkie Collins. Wilkie is was a preeminant Victorian author, I've read two of his best known books Moonstone and Woman in White and a runnerup, No Name, He is a master storyteller and these three novellas did him justice, I have to wonder, though, if the sometimes seeming absurdity of the plots were actually based on occurrences in the news or even among Collins' own social set.


This set of novellas had me thinking of the Backfields and other Brits who abounded during Churchill's era, They led lives that were, according to the books, experiments in social, moral and physical pursuits, In fact, as I think about it Collins' stories are surely tamer! His imagination crafted plots that twist and turn on social mores, some of which seem rather tame by today's standards.
So plots of these three stories

Mis or Mrs A young woman and her cousin secretly marry so that she can escape being wed to an older man who turns out to have a shady background.


The Haunted Hotel A jilted woman and the family of the man who jilted her, wind up in Venice where her exsuitor was murdered.
Their connections extra sensory perceptions to the ex were strong enough to solve his murder,

The Guilty River A young man returns to England to inherit his estate and kindles a love for a former childhood friend of lower social rank.


All three stories have happy endings, in fact marriages, where the culprits were vanquished, The couples also displayed amazing patience in dealing with tie and situations, Now I'm going to fast forward in time from thes to the future of a Verner Vinge novel! ,Stars

This was my first time reading Wilkie Collins, Its something Ive intended to do for years and simply never got round to, so when one of my groups suggested we do a group read of The Haunted Hotel I dusted my copy off and eagerly got down to it.
Although not quite what I was expecting and far from perfect as either a ghost story or a murder mystery, I enjoyed the story so much that instead of picking up another book I went straight back to pageand got started on the other novellas in this collection.
And while I would love to say they didnt disappoint, the truth is that the last one did, However, each story had some strong things going for it, and each well worth the read, especially if youre a fan of gothic literature,

The first story in this book, Miss or Mrs is the most grounded and mundane, The atmosphere and threat come not from a sinister setting or some supernatural force, but a brutally human antagonist, Richard Turlington is your typical nasty, controlling, older man who plans to marry a girl in her teens and has an unpleasantly strong influence over her father to make it happen.
To be honest there is nothing particularly interesting about him hes heavily hinted to be a very bad guy from the first chapter and then goes on to prove himself a very bad guy.
Quelle surprise! What was interesting was the heroine Natalie is fifteen years old and mixed race mostly of white extraction but with visible signs of her Negro blood and French blood.
There are some unfortunate implications that it is this nonwhite blood that makes her sexually mature at such an early age but, for the most part, her appearance is described without unpleasant fetishisation, as both beautiful and desirable.
Tall, dark, athletic, and a little bit booby, shes about as far as I can imagine from the stereotypical Victorian damsel in distress, And shes got a likable personality too, I wasnt shouting at her not to be an idiot at any point she doesnt love Turlington, she has no intention of marrying him and defies his commands to stop seeing her friends, but at the same time shes a fifteen year old nervous at the thought of escaping by eloping with the man she does love and abandoning her father and that conflict was well played out.
She actually read like a mature teenager rather than either an adult or a child, as often happens, A modern audience does need to take in account the time period when considering the hero however, cause whatever way you look at it and however much he may love her, hes still a man in his twenties getting it on with his fifteen year old cousin strangely enough at fifteen I would have been less bothered by the age than the cousin thing while now atits the other way round.


Overall though it was an enjoyable story, The legal intricacies and hypocrisies of the law that Collins uses were an interesting way to go about trying to solve the conflict and the clandestine marriage, at least, was directly taken from an incident in Collins own life which always adds another layer of interest.
The contrast and relationship between Natalie and her best friend, who married for a title and money and now regrets it, was a nice example of female friendship even if their conversations, by necessity of length, all revolved around men and the comic banter between Natalies father and her aunt constantly interrupting each other was well played and not too exaggerated.
In the end, however, Miss or Mrs turned out to be one of those awkwardlength stories where an ending that would be absolutely fine in a shorter story just feels rushed and notquiteright once youve spent this much time getting to know the characters.
Its a danger with the novella form, and one thats hard

to avoid, but I just felt a littlecheated I guess with how quickly everything resolved itself at the end.


The Haunted Hotel is, I believe, the best known of these three novellas and not without reason, As I said before, its not at all what I was expecting going in and its not perfect as either a ghost story, murder mystery, or relationship drama and occasionally the three threads dont always mesh well together, but its a very enjoyable read and certainly not without merit.
Here I confess I found the opposite problem to Miss or Mrs and found the plot far more interesting than the characters, Agnes is alright I suppose, her refusal to blame the other woman for her fiancée leaving her is definitely admirable since the other woman didnt know he was engaged Id have had much less sympathy with Agnes if she had blamed her.
And her conflicted feeling after he dies mysteriously shortly after his wedding are believable and well portrayed, But eeeeugh, Henry. I just cant stand men who go by the theory if I ask her enough shell say yes eventually, No! If you keep pressuring a girl whos not interested all you do is make her uncomfortable, In fairness this was actually well portrayed and other characters did tell him off for his timing, but he still gets the girl in the end.
The one character I really liked though was the villainess of the piece the strangely pale and beautiful Countess Narona who snatched Lord Montbarry away from Agnes by being way more interesting but a lot less nice.
A victim of numerous scandals, youre never sure quite how much she deserves and quite how much of it is malicious gossip that in turn drives her even further away from societal norms and into more scandal.


But onto the plot, I was very surprised to that almost the whole first half of the novel is set in England, rather than Venice and that the Hotel barely features until the latter chapters.
The early stuff sets up the characters, the relationships, and the mystery Lord Montbarrys death in a Venetian palace while on his honeymoon but the supernatural gothic stuff I was expecting doesnt show up at all until the last half.
Which results in a slightly disjointed story and me wondering quite why the supernatural stuff was included at all, Dont get me wrong the idea of a dead mans relatives staying in the room where he died and each experiencing supernatural visions, odours, or dreams that hint at his death being a concealed murder is a powerful idea.
As a plot for a ghost story I like it, it just doesnt quite work with there being such a very long and mundane set up to it.
It feels a bit awkward and out of place, especially when all the clues needed are already there to work out what happened, Ill give Collins a little credit here and say that the familiar murdermystery trope used here probably wasnt as overused inas it is now in, and that Victorian audiences probably hadnt been quite so exposed to it, but I still managed to solve the murder within a paragraph of the first real clue appearing well before any ghostly activity at all.


I was a little disappointed too that not much had been done with Venice itself, Its such a beautiful, unique, and almost intrinsically gothic city that I wanted to see it getting a bit more love but the hotel might as well have been anywhere else in the world for all the use that was made of the setting of the city itself.
We get lots on the Venetian architecture within the former palace, but very little of the rest of Venice, not even just to add to the already creepy atmosphere.
Buuut, thats just my love of Venice speaking I guess, Its a compelling story, even if you do get to the conclusion before the characters, It also leaves you with plenty of interesting questions, particularly about the Countess, whilst wrapping the plot itself up quite nicely, Is the Baron really her brother as she claims Or her lover as is strongly implied by everything else in the story Personally I think definitely the second, but quite possibly both.
Is her folly selfinflicted or spurred on by some supernatural force Her premonition that Agnes would destroy her genuine or merely selffulfilling paranoia

And now, The Guilty River, the weak link of the book.
And it started so well too, a sympathetic protagonist, a sympathetic antagonist, a feisty love interest but then Eugh, the protagonist lost my sympathy when he refused to condemn the antagonists threatening and scary behaviour towards the love interest.
When the girl who you fancys father says my lodger threatened to kill anyone who tries to take my girl away from him the appropriate response is not to think the father must have wound him up into saying something silly.
When a girl makes it clear she finds a mans advances uncomfortable and threatening you dont feel sympathy for the guy and admire his patience and devotion against adversity.
You just dont. And I dont care that hes a pacifist and not the jealous type you dont need to be an overprotective jerk to realise that that behavior is totally out of line and not something to sympathise with.
It shows a basic lack of respect for the girl that had me hoping that neither of them got her,

And the antagonist obviously I lost sympathy with him too for this behavior, Suddenly losing your hearing might excuse you from being incredibly depressed and a dick to people for a while but it does not excuse you from sexual harassment.
And then the its in the blood excuse, Oh of course, youre a villain because your father abandoned a girl, your uncle cheated at dice and your grandfather was a murderer! Clearly the descent into villainy was almost predetermined! Yeah not buying it.


Despite a wonderfully realised setting, some humourous fishoutofwater moments with the protagonist trying to get to grips with Victorian high society, and an interesting storyline, the characters just bothered me too much to rate this one any higher than astar.
The only character I felt genuine concern for in this tale of murder and jealousy was the loyal, evildetecting, dog,

Overall though I think theres something to appreciate in each of the stories, Although it took me a while to get through the last story I am glad I read the whole book instead of just stopping after The Haunted Hotel.
Wilkie Collins writing is much more accessible than I had expected and am now really looking forward to reading The Woman in White for another group next month.
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