Thursday, January 12, 2023

Books read in 2022: No. 35, Books read in 2023: No. 1 -- No Name

by Wilkie Collins

Started: Nov. 15, 2022
Finished: January 12, 2023

Notes: I kicked off my fiction reading in 2022 by trying my first novel from this 19th-Century author, and I generally enjoyed the book, so I thought I'd wind down the year and start the next one by reading another from him.

Mini review: That was a long read, the longest I've had in years, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Collins might be my favorite of the Victorian authors of whom I've read. Here a pair of sisters lose their inheritance after the deaths of their parents, and one sister settles into a life of trying to recover that inheritance by any means possible, up to conning people and scandal. This is not an action novel, but very much in the vein of later soap operas to no small extent, but the characters are all interesting, the plot moves along fairly quickly, and the ending is as perfect an ending for a novel as I've experienced. I'm sure I'll be reading Wilkie Collins again.

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