#95: The Woman in White

As you may have noticed, The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, nearly single-handedly destroyed my blog.  Okay, so maybe kids, work, house, pets, and an overgrown garden played their parts, but The Woman in White had her ghostly hands around the neck of The Book Club Book and squeezed.  Luckily, months later, I was able to pry her white fingers away and pump some life back into the nearly-dead, motionless body of this blog.

Why is The Woman in White so detrimental to The Book Club Book, you ask?  Well, because it’s just not that remarkable.  The prospect of filling a whole blog post with ramblings of a book that I don’t really care about, I knew, would do nothing more than lull the reader and the writer (me) to sleep.  And who wants to write about a boring book when there are so many other lovely, more exciting books to read!?  Let it die, I told myself.  If these are the kinds of books I’m going to have to write about, then I might as well let it die. 

But I’m just not the type to give up easily, albeit it may take me several months of dodging the battle before I decide to join the war.  I never forget, and darn that Woman in White!  I just could not let her win!  My revenge is to write as short of a review as possible, because honestly, I feel that is all this book deserves.  And Dear Reader, I feel much more of a commitment to entertain you than I do to give homage to poor Wilkie Collins.

Let me first add the disclaimer that I (gasp) have never really cared for mystery books.  So what if this book started a genre?  It reads just like most other mysteries (yawn).  Woman is wronged, man outwits and defeats the bad guy, right after his diabolical plan is revealed.  People die along the way.  Blah, blah, blah.  If you like mysteries, in which the outcome always, always is assured, you will like this book.  If you don’t, well, then, don’t bother—unless you want to be well-read and brag to your friends that you’ve read “One of The Greatest Classics of All Time”, you arrogant shrew.

What's Next?

Truthfully, I’ve read The Woman in White twice now, straining to gather a deeper meaning to present to you, and I still cannot garner anything worthwhile.  I couldn’t even muster together a witty quiz to salvage it all.  Hopefully, my next book, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger will fare better in my estimation.  Don’t worry, Dear Reader, I’ve already read it.  And I promise you, my next review will not be filled with complaints.  Sorry, no preview for this one.  Rumors of film adaptations of this book have been circulated for years and years, but so far, none have come into fruition.