This book is ok. I want to read some other books by this author to see if I did not like the writing or if this book is just an inferior work. ( )

I'm a big fan of Wilkie Collins. Basil is Collins' second published novel, and might be disappointing if you've only read The Woman in White and/or The Moonstone, although the seeds of the sensation novel are already in place in Basil: what Dorothy Goldman in her introduction calls 'domestic crime', madness, dark secrets and the odd femme fatale.

Basil is the younger son of a father proud of his lineage. When Basil falls in love with Margaret Sherwin, the daughter of a lowly linen draper, he knows his father will never approve of the marriage. He asks Margaret's father for permission to keep the marriage a secret until such time as he can present it to his father as a fait accompli. Mr Sherwin agrees, on one condition: that Basil should marry Margaret immediately, but not consummate the marriage until a year has passed.

The doubling in this novel is rather too obviously done: dark, dangerous, sexual Margaret is very obviously the opposite of Basil's sister Clara, who is fair and chaste. Goldman suggests that the two women 'subtextually form dual aspects of one woman'. Unfortunately they are presented in a very simplistic, stereotypical way.

Basil's dark double is Robert Mannion, a confidential clerk who works for Mr Sherwin. His background is a mystery, and Basil can't figure out either his personality, or the powerful hold he seems to have over the whole Sherwin family. Things begin to become clear when Basil follows Mannion, who has gone to collect Margaret from a party. Basil follows Mannion and Margaret to a seedy hotel, and - through a thin partition wall - listens to them talking...

Although not half as thrilling as Collins' more celebrated novel, this is nevertheless very readable and entertaining, although the final confrontation between Mannion and Basil is disappointing and somewhat perfunctory. [November 2007]

'Basil', being one of Collins earlier works, was never going to be as exciting or thrilling as his later novels 'The Woman in White' and 'The Moonstone'. I ventured to expect this when I voluntarily picked this book up to see the roots of the later masterpieces.

'Basil' is the beginning of the mystery thriller that Collins would adopt later on, and the inferiority of his treatment of this genre is easy to see. Whereas in 'The Moonstone' things were difficult to predict, and unable to see where things are going, the signs in 'Basil' are not discreet enough, there are no red herrings, what you read are the glaringly obvious hints that lead the story on and lead you to guess the subsequent events. This makes reading 'Basil' a lot less thrilling to read, and will pale in comparison to what you may have read in TWIW and TM. If you have not read these two novels, and you want to give Collins a try, this is not a good introduction (unless you take the length of the novel into account, which took me a day to read, whilst his later novels take three days). There is too much foreshadowing, and too much of it is made very clear.

'Basil' has a good basic plot, his characters well drawn out, but verging on stereotypical which is demonstrated on Basil's first dream of the two ladies in his life. One is dark, shrouded by wood in shadows, the other is pure and white, illuminated by sunshine and pleasant landscape. This is the basic concept of Margaret, his deceitful wife, and Clara, his virtuous sister. The protagonist can be difficult to like sometimes, his reasoning can be unconvincing, and his actions verge on stupidity, not on behalf of the character, but on behalf of Collins, on creating him. Other drawbacks are seen in the plot holes, and things that just wouldn't make logical sense of any person to act. Such as Robert writing a whole confession on everything he had done, leaving evidence of himself and Margaret to other eyes. On top of that, he chooses to omit certain details of his confession which seems nothing more than a scape goat of Collins as he cannot think of a decent enough argument that might have swayed Margaret to act as she did (though her motives are clumsingly added later on).

This early work has flaws, but it's only a short work, and if you wanted to enlighten yourself of Collins' earlier work, this would be a good place to start as it foreshadows many themes to take hold of later novels, and also seems to have quite a bit of autobiographical detail which can allude to his secret life with his mistresses (the protagonist also has the exact same interest as Collins regarding his career). By all means, pick this book up, it's surely inferior, but it's highly readable and satisfies many curiosities that one may have of the author. ( )