Christy Clark
It’s often said that the circumstances in which a book is read define the reader’s reception unalterably. I read a creamy blue miniature copy of The Moonstone, gifted by my mum, sitting on a stone wall in the Lake District last summer. And along with the setting from which I read it, I’ve been thinking about Wilkie Collins’ masterpiece since. Here is why it is Impact’s Christy Clark’s book of the month.
I have always been a fan of detective fiction. Whether Agatha Christie or Conan Doyle, I’ve oftentimes felt myself carried along by the need to know, more than anything else, whodunnit? To me the mystery novel is formative, and one of my earliest memories of falling deeply into the grasp of literature. I thought I’d seen it all: the plot-twists, the ‘surprise’ murderers, the quaint English villages in which murder, naturally, occurs – as my dad says the formulaic detective story. Turns out the mystery novel had one-upped me, once again.
THE MOONSTONE IS A UNIQUE READ WHETHER TAKEN AS A STUDY IN COLONIALISM, CHARACTER, OR JUST THE PROLIFIC USE OF PLOT AND PROSE TO SUBMERGE THE READER’S ATTENTION COMPLETELY.
For even Poirot and Holmes were preceded by deaths, detectives, and denouements. Collins’ pioneering The Moonstone was published in 1868 and remains one of the most touching, un-putdownable novels I’ve ever read. If my endorsement isn’t enough, take T.S. Eliot’s, who called it ‘the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels in a genre invented by Collins’.
Told through three different perspectives, the novel tracks the disappearance of the Moonstone – an exquisite diamond stolen during the Siege of Seringapatam and given to a young lady, Miss Rachel Verinder. Through several points of view, picturesque settings, and pivotal points in time, the reader stays about as close to the edge of their seat as can be done without collapsing to the floor.
Collins marries the typical suspicion of the mystery novel to an inticing character study, love story, or even travel narrative. Yet at its heart, The Moonstone is a meditation on colonial legacy and its relationship to the British bourgeois – how the stealing of a precious stone from its rightful place might catalyse all kinds of motion; how a character might deal with not just the grief of losing a precious gift, but the guilt (or lack thereof) behind exposing entire nations and religions for monetary gain.
You don’t have to get too caught up in imperialism, though, The Moonstone is a unique read whether taken as a study in colonialism, character, or just the prolific use of plot and prose to submerge the reader’s attention completely.
This is why it’s my book of the month, still, 156 years after its publication. With spring on the brink, and reading-week underway, what could be stopping you? Nobody captures the poignancy of a mystery novel quite like Wilkie Collins; nobody, most likely, ever will.
Christy Clark
Featured image courtesy of Florencia Viadana on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
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