Fabian's Reviews > The Woman in White

This is an obvious precursor to myriad crime dramas & the "sensationalist novel."

I found it long but very rewarding. 600+ pages of different POV's (a novel concept then, but now widely utilized); two concrete settings; only five main characters (perhaps not more than 15 in all)... and it is all choreographed so beautifully. The settings are spooky; the motives of characters, although well known from the very start and from the intense descriptions throughout, still manage to surprise. No matter that The Secret deals with money & family skeletons-in-the-closet... & a bunch of classicist European stuff. All the elements I adore are here. It's Gothic, & the writer is like some British Hawthorne (Well at least I think so: & less like his peer, Charles Dickens*).

No matter that bad guys get what they deserve in the end... they arrive at oh so unconventional ends. Really! And the pacing is exactly what a serial novel of this magnitude would require it to endure. I kept at it... found it invigorating, elegant, and haunting.

*This was published in the middle of the 19th century, and along with one of Dicken's serialized masterpieces, this one also ran! Lucky short-living Londoners.