Take It! Take It!

The Moonstone
Wilkie Collins

I'm probably one of the last bloggers out there to have read this. A part of me has been meaning to, for the longest time, ever since I saw that Jeopardy episode years back where the Final Jeopardy question requires The Moonstone as the answer. I remember Alex Trebek commenting on it when none of the contestants got the correct answer. Ah well, what a way to pick future reads.

The story is simple enough: just another case of a stolen bauble, in this one a diamond probably as large as a Faberge egg or even larger. Instead of going the route traveled by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in utilizing just one protagonist (a detective so to speak, in the person of Sherlock Holmes) in solving the crime, Wilkie Collins chose a different route, ensnaring readers with a vibrant backdrop of how the jewel came to be in the possession of the young lady, Rachel Verinder, how every characters' lives were thrown off kilter after the theft of the diamond was consummated, and lastly, the resolution in the end that is more than satisfying.

That's practically what happened but the thing about this story is the way Collins told it. It's not a simple whodunit. There's enough meat in the story to give primacy not just to the excellent powers of deduction made by a handful of the characters (both major and minor) but also of painting a picture of those times in the eyes of a handful of observers who served as narrators or more like journalists for the whole book, which made the entire mystery more than a joy to read, what with the narrators' varying thoughts coloring the narrative all throughout.

Set in that long ago era where ladies weren't allowed to go out unescorted lest talks start of conduct unbecoming of one, The Moonstone is a detailed exposition of one family's trials through the greedy act of taking the jewel from its rightful owner from the very start of the story. With different narrators for each major chapter, one is sure to despair in one page, delight in the next, doubt in the succeeding chapters, dread for the charactes and digest the last pages for the manner by which the observer recounts the times certain incidents occur. I particularly adored Miss Clack because her chapters were a welcome respite for the seriousness of the entire mystery. She made me laugh. A lot. Still, this isn't, as a whole, a funny book. But those moments of hilarity were precious.

When the puzzle pieces finally fell into place you close the book with a satisfying smile to your face. In my case I actually used the Page Down key, hahaha. One of the great things with books such as this is that it's already part of the public domain and I can download this (and other classics) to my heart's content. I'm also sure to check out Wilkie Collins' other stories sometime in the future.

This is a sure winner of a story so I highly recommend it to anyone.

Considering also that this is a very popular book and that a lot of bloggers have posted about this, I will follow Memory and instead point you to Fyrefly's Book Blogs Search Engine for other interesting points of view.