what an amazing story!

I could not tear myself from this book. Incredible story, many unexpected twists, and great performance too.

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Fabulous narrator, good story, a few annoying bits

First off, narrator Ian Holm is brilliant, one of the very best readers. He can be subtle or broad with his characterizations and knows what to do with every line, it's a delight to listen to him.

The book itself was a good and entertaining one, I recommend it.
It's got elements of mystery, detective story, thriller and love story. There's a fair bit of humour and exaggerated characters, of course a lot of plot twists and turns and not too much sentimentality, a really nice combination. The plot moves at a really good pace for a 19th century novel, even though it is overall a tiny bit too long and overstuffed. Not as dragged out as his other famous novel, the Moonstone, though.
Later on there's plenty of law stuff which I found a bit too much, but it's important for the story, so it's allowed ;).

While I enjoyed the exciting journey the book took me on, I was rather disappointed with how the author handles his (numerous and important) female characters.
He is 100% sympathetic with them, puts them very much in the center of his story, but they are not allowed to do much on their own, even if they have a mind of their own. They are most of them passive and stick to propriety in such a slavish way that it's easy for men to misuse them. Notable exception is the Woman in White who is active and drives the plot in the beginning, but who's also depicted as mentally not normal and (spoiler) does not get a happy end. There's also a genuinely cool roof climbing scene of Marianne's, but for which she then annoyingly gets severely punished by the author in return. Later on, she gets to do a bit more, but the author also bars her inside a house for the last third of the book. And Laura, who is the main interest of almost all people in this story, is a complete non-character, never does anything on her own, never opens her mouth and has to live through a ton of bad experiences from which she gets severely traumatized. Bah.
I'm probably expecting too much from a 19th century novel written by a man, even if he considered himself a bit of a social justice warrior. But even women back then must have noticed these discrepancies, since Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote her fabulous novel Lady Audley's Secret as a more female-friendly answer to The Woman in White. Definitely read that one for an extremely capable anti-heroine and equally exciting and well-written sensation novel entertainment.

Another point of annoyance for me was the constant suspicion towards "foreigners" in this book. I'm used to English literature of that time being rather nationalist though, and at least the one "evil" Italian is countered with a "nice" one as well (even though both of them are supposed to be read as rather ridiculous).

That being said, there are quite a number of progressive thoughts and social criticism of the time in this book, so I really can't be too annoyed with Wilkie Collins. Listen to The Woman in White if you like 19th century lit and aren't afraid of long books, it's one of the good ones.

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A Mystery Classic

I read the book decades ago and still rememered being barely able to put it down. I admire the air of mystery and the carefully crafted plot that has lost nothing of its fasication after 160 years. I also liked the presentation by Ian Holm, the audiobook is a clear recomendation if you enjoy such titles at all.

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